artist

Power, Mutiny and Monster Island

By heathercarroll February 2, 2018
Exhibitions, Processing, Uncategorized, Weisman Art Museum

While processing the archival materials of the curatorial department of the Weisman Art Museum, I came across an article from MN Daily called Imaginative Immersion: Three Days, Five Artists, which was about an atypical exhibit at the Weisman Art Museum in February of 2008. These five artists were part of a group independent study with UMN’s art department inspired by Paul Shambroom’s exhibit at WAM the previous spring titled Picturing Power. The independent course culminated in “a semi-impromptu mural” titled Mutiny. The students–Andy Brinkman, Brett Gustafson, Miles Mendenhall, Rhett Roberts and Travis Hetman–formed the group known as Monster Island. Over the course of three(ish) days, Monster Island installed Mutiny in the Shepherd Room of the Weisman Art Museum.

Monster Island

mon·ster is·land
-noun

  1. Multi-headed art beast originating from Minneapolis, MN. Known to eat art.
  2. Geographical location designed specifically for the containment of gigantic creatures.
Thanks to the Wayback Machine for the snippet above from Monster Island’s former website

To exhibit in a museum is a truly amazing opportunity for students. The only caveat to this opportunity: they could leave no mark or trace on the walls of this room. Instead the students used large sheets of paper “(sketched, painted and chalked) and a whole lot of blue masking tape.” 

“In their five-day project, Monster Island sought to address this relationship between public and private space, and the power between and throughout those spaces, not only through the final piece, but also through the interactive experience of construction. While the process unfurled as a sea of paper, paint and chalk onto the carpeted floor of the Shepherd Room, the guys encouraged museum-goers to enter, examine and discuss.”

MN Daily reporters followed the mural project’s installation, evolution and soundtrack from beginning to the opening celebration on Feb 24, 2008. The article mentions a timelapse of the installation that I’d love to see someday.

For more, click on the images below or contact nationalsales@mndaily.com for the more information or a copy of the article.

Mutiny article, part 1.

Mutiny article, part 2.

Mutiny article, part 3.

 

 

 

 

 

 

—Heather Carroll is the processing archivist for the Weisman Art Museum‘s collection at the University of Minnesota Archives. This project was made possible by funds provided by the State of Minnesota from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the Minnesota Historical Society.

Library Amnesty Success

By heathercarroll January 25, 2018
Uncategorized, University Gallery

 

 

As with any loan from a library, a bank or otherwise, unexpected things can happen. The University of Minnesota’s permanent art collection has long had an art rental program and at one point in time there were no rental fees to University employees. It happened one day in 1969 that a loan gone awry found its way to Wilson library and back home to the art collection.

While I wasn’t able to find an image of the returned water color of Pillsbury Hall by Stanford Fenelle, I found another Fenelle work in WAM’s collection depicting Folwell Hall.

Check out this highlight from the Digital Content Libraries: a Then/Now Image Overlay including artworks of locations on campus by Josephine Lutz Rollins, Cameron Booth and Stanford Fenelle. The project was facilitated by UMN’s DASH team.

 

—Heather Carroll is the processing archivist for the Weisman Art Museum‘s collection at the University of Minnesota Archives. This project was made possible by funds provided by the State of Minnesota from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the Minnesota Historical Society.

 

 

In the Spirit of Martin

By heathercarroll January 15, 2018
Exhibitions, Uncategorized, Weisman Art Museum

Fifteen years ago this weekend, the anticipated exhibition In the Spirit of Martin: The Living Legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. opened at the Weisman Art Museum with a full schedule of events. The purpose of the exhibition is clearly stated in the invitational brochure:  “By juxtaposing accounts in Dr. King’s life with visual renderings of those events, In the Spirit of Martin speaks to the power of art to shape collective national memory.” 

Although the exhibition was assembled by an outside curator, the local planning committee was comprised of over 38 individuals. Events associated with the exhibition included a preview party, choral performance, a community tribute to john powell, founder of the Institute on Race and Poverty, a talk with MLK’s friend and Pulitzer prize-winning author Roger Wilkins, Special MLK Day programs, Minneapolis Urban League’s documentary screening and a lecture by renowned artist Faith Ringold titled Art, Activism, and African-American Experience.

“Confrontation at the Bridge” by Jacob Lawrence, 1975. Included in WAM’s invitational brochure for the exhibition “In the Spirit of Martin”.

“Let Kingdom Come” by Paul Goodnight, 1992. Included in WAM’s invitational brochure for the exhibition “In the Spirit of Martin”.

“Peaceable Kingdon” by Malcah Zeldis, 1999. Included in WAM’s invitational brochure for the exhibition “In the Spirit of Martin”.

“In the Spirit of Martin was the first major museum exhibition to use the visual arts to explore the inspiring life and enduring legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Civil Rights leader, statesman, minister, and martyr, Martin Luther King is one of the most compelling figures in American history. An overview of the Civil Rights movement set the stage for the exhibition’s impressive range of artistic offerings. In the Spirit of Martin included paintings, works on paper, prints, sculpture, and mixed-media pieces by such artists as Elizabeth Catlett, Thornton Dial, L’Merchie Frazier, Jacob Lawrence, May Stevens, Charles White, and John Wilson. Some of the artworks cast Dr. King as a martyr and comment on violence in American society. These images convey the tremendous sense of outrage and loss caused by Dr. King’s death. Others examine his status as an icon of popular culture or a source of African American pride. Through its presentation of work in the visual arts, the exhibition demonstrates the extraordinary influence of Dr. King and speaks to the power of art to shape our collective national memory. A wide range of visual artists responded to Dr. King’s life and grappled with his message.”

~from Verve Editions

It wasn’t only visual artists that responded to the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. In the archives in an oversize box, there is a black spiral bound sketchbook that was used as comment book for this exhibition. Visitors–especially children–were so inspired by the exhibition that many took the time to share their own inspired thoughts and creations.
Here are just a few:

To quote Mary from Central Senior High, “This I learned and will hold in my mind to help me see, when other’s are blinded”.

—Heather Carroll is the processing archivist for the Weisman Art Museum‘s collection at the University of Minnesota Archives. This project was made possible by funds provided by the State of Minnesota from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the Minnesota Historical Society.

A Sonnet for WAM

By heathercarroll November 30, 2017
Uncategorized, Weisman Art Museum

In the summer of 2011 while the Weisman Art Museum was closed for construction, local visual poet Scott Helmes proposed a sonnet to honor the completion of an expansion to the iconic building. The correspondence from Helmes is as engaging to look at as the artist’s other works.

Helmes proposal begins:

Please send me a small plastic bag of dirt, sand, gravel, dust, from your museum construction site.
I will return to you a dedication sonnet, signed with the date of your opening, as a gift of the artist to your collection.

The finished work of art titled Weisman Art Museum Dedication Sonnet E on October 2, 2011 was added WAM’s collection in 2011. These letters whjich were previously amidst other files of correspondence now reside in the WAM registrar’s object files rather than the archives because the letters deal specifically with the creation and acquisition of an artwork in the collection. Although no image is currently available for this artwork, it is similar in appearance to the photographic example sent with the letter.

Helmes other works are included in WAM’s collection, Minneapolis Institute of Art, various other art collection and his writings are included in the Avant Writing Collection of The Ohio State University Libraries

—Heather Carroll is the processing archivist for the Weisman Art Museum‘s collection at the University of Minnesota Archives. This project was made possible by funds provided by the State of Minnesota from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the Minnesota Historical Society.

“Art and Science Can Open the Door”

By heathercarroll November 16, 2017
Exhibitions, Processing, Uncategorized, University Gallery

I find the two best parts of working in the archives are making discoveries while I’m processing materials, and helping people answer questions and make their own discoveries. In the library and archive world, the latter is called Reference Service. Recently, I was able to provide reference services using WAM’s archival collection, UMN’s digital conservancy and the Digital Content Library to help a researcher uncover information about a specific set of artworks by UMN faculty member, Walter Quirt (pronounced KURT), made while he was in the Yucatan region of Mexico.

Quirt was a mostly self taught painter, “a pioneer of American abstract art” and “a man of  strong and forthright opinions, a man of ideas” according to H.H. Arneson, Chairman of the Art Department, from a clipping dated November 17, 1958 found in the University Gallery’s press books.

Walter Quirt really was a “man of ideas” who, along with UMN studio art student Jack French, took art to science’s door. They traveled to the Yucatan region of Mexico in the Winter of 1967 to test a social science hypothesis regarding cultural visual preferences. To test the theory, the artists would take photographs of the local landscapes and urban terrains, then translate the linear elements and movement of the photographs into drawings which would then be shown to local residents to gauge their non-verbal reactions.

Page 1

During what little leisure time they had during this months-long trip, Walter Quirt made observational drawings of life in the Yucatan. Shortly after their return from the Yucatan, Quirt exhibited seventeen of his Yucatan drawings at the U Gallery. For the exhibition statement, he wrote:

Page 2

Most of the drawings in this exhibition are casual impressions of an amateur bull fight I witnessed in Ticul, Yucatan. Those not of this subject bear a relation to the visual test material Mr. Jack French and I worked on during our stay in Ticul, which we carried out on behalf of Dr. Strodtbeck of the University of Chicago and the sponsorship of The International Programs and Graduate School of the University of Minnesota.

One of the Yucatan drawings: Amateur Bull Fight, Ticul, Yucatan by Walter Quirt, 1967. Image Courtesy of Weisman Art Muesum, accessed through UMN’s Digital Content Library.

A year later, French exhibited his MFA thesis, also at the University Gallery.

St Paul Dispatch blurb from May 25, 1967

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Although I wasn’t able to locate images of either exhibition on display, French wrote an interesting paper of his field observations and findings of the Yucatan project that closed with these thoughts:

Science has proven that energy is the essential force needed for life and motion. If the energy is misused it follows that life and motion will be in jeopardy. Art is also a form of energy and the theoritician [sic] can show that a’ specific art form has been created by the acceptance of a certain kind of energy. We know that science can measure physical energy forces. We have not been able to measure psychological energy forces, because we have never isolated a specific instrument by which to arrive at this
measurement. A test based on linear preferences may well be the necessary instrument needed for this energy measurement.

Psychologists working in the field of perception, now argue that visual stimuli do, in fact, affect mans’ social and psychological
motivations. Logically -then, the visual arts represent a socio-psychological force which can affect the attitudes and temperaments of individual and social behavioral patterns. If these two antecedents are alligned [sic] with a definite procedure for measuring the individual and social preference for a particular linear energy, it seems highly probable that art and science
can open the door to a deeper understanding of the living patterns of man and society.

Its a pretty great day when through references services in the archives we get to open a door to a place where art and science meet.

—Heather Carroll is the processing archivist for the Weisman Art Museum‘s collection at the University of Minnesota Archives. This project was made possible by funds provided by the State of Minnesota from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the Minnesota Historical Society.

 

Sighted: James Lee Byars!

By heathercarroll August 23, 2017
Uncategorized, Weisman Art Museum

 

 

As you can clearly see by the hat, this architectural sketch by E.C. of Frank O. Gehry & Associates exemplifies not only how the skylights of the Weisman Art Museum cast light indirectly to illuminate artworks but also the hope that conceptual artist James Lee Byars (1932-1997) might visit the shining new building upon its completion in 1993.

Coincidence or not?

James Lee Byars performing "UP?" for "Made With Paper" exhibition

James Lee Byars performing “UP?” for “Made With Paper” exhibition in 1968 at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in New York City, wearing his signature hat. Photo courtesy of the American Craft Council. http://digital.craftcouncil.org/digital/collection/p15785coll6/id/6038/rec/4

“Obsessed by the idea of perfection, Byars produced a remarkable body of work that strove to give form to his search for beauty and truth. Pursuing what he called “the first totally interrogative philosophy,” he made and proposed art at scales ranging from the vastness of outer space to the microscopic level of subatomic particles, in an attempt to delineate the limits of our knowledge while enacting a desire for something more.” – Wikipedia

—Heather Carroll is the processing archivist for the Weisman Art Museum‘s collection at the University of Minnesota Archives. This project was made possible by funds provided by the State of Minnesota from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the Minnesota Historical Society.

 

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