Exhibition Status: Past

John Dreyfuss

Dreyfuss_sculptor

John Dreyfuss: Sculptor

“From images of an American pastime to offshoots of a foreign culture, sculptor John Dreyfuss strikes a timeless balance between the past and present.”

— Judith Bell, Southern Accents

“Through the sparest of means, Mr. Dreyfuss conveys something of the amplitude and grace of nature.”

— Eric Gibson, The Washington Times

Dreyfuss’s bronze figures and animals are noted for their harmonious design and exquisite finishes. His training in both architecture and sculpture found a poetic fusion in the essential duality of his work, where abstracted lines blend seamlessly with the lifelike shapes and textures intrinsic to sculptural realism. His innovative use of patina and “invisible” supports (suspension wires, or pedestals that follow the flow of a figure, as if emerging from water) contribute to the illusionistic synthesis of life and sculptural artifice, where form, surface, and evocation of the natural world engage us on many levels at once.

For five years, International Arts & Artists circulated this exhibition of 19 outdoor bronze works, all mounted on steel pedestals, to museum gardens and grounds and to city plazas in South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, and Virginia. Most are extremely large—up to 22 feet in length—and include stylized figures of animals, boats, urns, and other objects, many of which inhabit a sculpturally fluid interstice between beast and object d’art. Some of his most striking creations include his bronze renderings of baseball players—a dreamlike abstraction of long-ago Senators games at his childhood hometown of Washington, DC.

Crossing Cultures

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Crossing Cultures: Belle Yang, A Story of Immigration

“As an art exhibition curator, when I opened and read Belle Yang’s books, I walked into a museum gallery each time.”

–Deborah Silguero, Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the National Steinbeck Center

“I applaud you for sharing your story of immigration…and hope that it will be heard.”

– Nancy Pelosi

“Belle’s voice is so true and pure it is capable of washing away the grimy layers of cynicism.”

– Amy Tan

Belle Yang is an author, graphic novelist, and children’s book illustrator who translates her experiences as a Chinese-American immigrant into bold, powerful artworks. The exhibition features approximately 25 paintings and 8 illustrations that embrace Yang’s Asian heritage. Born in Taiwan, Yang spent part of her childhood in Japan before immigrating to the US with her family at the age of seven. In an effort to reconnect with her parents’ mainland Chinese roots, Yang studied at the Beijing Academy of Traditional Chinese Painting, where she developed an appreciation and respect for traditional ink paintings and folk art. After experiencing the horrors of the Tiananmen Massacre, Yang returned to the US determined not to waste the gift of America: freedom of expression.

Yang—whose Chinese first name, Xuan, means “Forget Sorrow”—has found her own voice, one that advocates justice for immigrants through captivating writing and compelling images. Exhibitions of her work have been presented at museums and cultural centers such as the National Steinbeck Center, Monterey Museum of Art, San Francisco Main Public Library, Pacific Asia Museum, Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, and the Boston Public Library. The exhibition is accompanied by an award-winning documentary film, My Name is Belle, in which the artist narrates her life story and shares the inspiration behind significant pieces in her oeuvre.

I try to instill the thought that no one is plain old American, even if a family has been several generations in America. We are all immigrants or have immigrant roots from far ranging places. — Belle Yang

Crafting Utopia

crafting-Utopia

Crafting Utopia: The Art of Shaker Women

“These items are not only beautifully made under their deceptively simple surfaces, they are also—to put it as simply as possible—labors of love.”

– D. Eric Bookhardt, Best of New Orleans

“A palpable feeling of peace emanates from…‘Crafting Utopia: The Art of Shaker Women.’”

– Julie Jenson, The Dispatch and The Rock Island Argus

Founded in the 1770s in Manchester, England, the Shakers were a progressive religious sect (a celibate offshoot of the Quakers) whose communal villages and handmade furnishings and tools exemplified their utopian ideals: purity, utility, self-sufficiency, and sexual and racial equality. Immigrating to America in the 1780s, the Shakers flourished in the vast spaces and freedoms of the new country, founding communities in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Maine, Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. Their furniture, tools, craftworks, architecture, and other artifacts—expressions of their austere religiosity and love of simple utility—are highly regarded for their purity of line, harmony of construction, ingenious design, and sturdy workmanship.

The Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, has the largest and most representative collection of Shaker artifacts available to public at an original site. This exhibition featured 115 beautifully crafted objects, including unique woodenware and household objects, costumes, textiles and furnishings. Crafting Utopia focused on the role of women in the Shaker community and their importance in the development of Shaker crafts.

China Modern

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China Modern: Designing 20th Century Popular Culture

“The takeaway for our visitors is understanding how dynamic China is and how that shift from capitalism to communism felt day to day as seen in people’s homes and through graphic designers whose goal was to sell something, either products or politics.”

– Bridget Bray, assistant curator, Pacific Asia Museum, excerpt from Los Angeles Times article

“Sometimes, a litchi box is more than a litchi box. In a designer’s hands, it can become a work of art, a cultural artifact or a piece of propaganda.”

– Karen Wada, LA Times

The dynamism of 20th century China was on full display in China Modern, which chronicled the country’s changing character through a celebration of its graphic art and material culture, illustrating how both political ideologies and cultural values are transmitted through conventional objects. The more than 180 objects—posters, calendars, litchi boxes, porcelain figures, trade cards and handbills, as well as advertisements for films, fashions, and toys—blurred the boundaries  between capitalist material culture and communist state propaganda, showing how the art of the sell evolved (or didn’t) throughout decades of social and cultural upheaval. Curator Kalim Winata believes that “these everyday materials have been the small steps by which great cultural shifts are made.”

This is the first exhibition to track graphic art and product design from the Qing Dynasty through the tumult of the 20th century, while also reflecting on the impact advertising art has had on the contemporary experience.

China Modern was organized by Pacific Asia Museum and toured by International Arts & Artists.

Arte en la Charrería

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Arte en la Charrería: The Artisanship of Mexican Equestrian Culture

“The ornate treasures in this exhibition represent one of the most important charro collections in Mexico.”

– Don Reeves, National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum

“Fans of cowboy culture are in for a rip-roaring treat.”

– Gilbert A. Bouchard, Edmonton Journal

Arte en la Charrería richly illustrates one of the most embedded traditions in the history of Mexico. The collection comes directly from Mexico and includes many never-before-seen splendors of the Mexican cowboy culture. These carefully crafted objects were created for rough work in the fields, yet the hand, eye, and dedication of Mexican artisans have graced them with the singular beauty of art objects.

Perhaps the most representative pieces are the costumes and saddles. Not only do the costumes provide an extraordinary window into this unique culture, but the components used in their manufacture—the materials and accessories, as well as the complex symbology of the decorations—create an elaborate web of cultural references.

The exhibition is as historically rich and educational as it is visually breathtaking. From work suits to grand gala and etiquette suits to China poblano and Adelita dresses, the exhibition reveals the care and attention to detail that have helped make the charro the keeper of a tradition that dates to the birth of a nation more than 500 years ago.

The spectacular objects in Arte en la Charrería—many dating from the late 1800s—come from prestigious collections throughout Mexico. These objects have rarely been seen outside of the country. They are more than vestiges of a nation’s folk traditions, they are reminders of a rich tradition that continues to this day.

Changing Identity

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Changing Identity: Recent Works by Women Artists from Vietnam

“Vietnamese contemporary art is vibrant, amazingly beautiful and honest. It’s a wonderful balance of East and West.”

– Naja Pham Lockwood, trustee, Asian Art Museum

“The feeling of the art comes alive with every piece.”

– Melinda Alisa Sykes, The Sentinel

Contemporary Vietnamese women artists challenged the traditional role of women in Changing Identity: Recent Works by Women Artists from Vietnam, a collection of approximately 50 recent works from 10 artists that toured 10 venues. Curated by Nora Annesley Taylor, a research associate with the Smithsonian Institution and associate professor at Arizona State University, the exhibition featured drawing, painting, photography, performance, sculpture, and video.

Today’s Vietnam—a diverse patchwork of 54 separate ethnic groups—is home to a wide-ranging art that brings together a dazzling array of cultural and historical (and sometimes paradoxical) influences and significances. Dinh Thi Tham Poong, who grew up near the Chinese border, creates sumptuous watercolors of woodland scenes on handcrafted paper derived from mulberry bark; Phuong M. Do, raised in Laos and educated in the United States as a Fulbright scholar, documents the émigré experience of deracination and loneliness in a striking series of photographic self-portraits on the streets of Vietnam; and Nguyen Bach Dan interlaces Chinese and American influences in her haunting ink landscapes of bristling forests, thickets and groves, at once traditional and surreal. Using a range of subject matters and aesthetic sensibilities, these and other artists explore gender and cultural identity, and offer a diversified view of Vietnam. They also examine ways to provide alternative representations of the female body and gender roles in their society.

Changing Identity was organized by International Arts & Artists and was supported in part by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation.

From Cassatt to Wyeth

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From Cassatt to Wyeth: American Masterworks from the Cedarhurst Center for the Arts

“This is a must-see show… With few exceptions, each work is representative of its creator’s general body of work, making the collection a capsule course in American art history.”

— Richard L. Brown, Rutland Daily Herald

“One of the most significant collections of late 19th and early 20th century American paintings found anywhere.”

— Philip E. Bishop, Orlando Sentinel

The extraordinary permanent collection of American paintings, works on paper, and sculpture owned by the Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts has made Mt. Vernon, Illinois, one of the most remarkable small towns in the United States. The collection was formed in the 1940s and 1950s by John R. and Eleanor R. Mitchell, a prosperous Mt. Vernon couple, who were able to acquire major works by Thomas Eakins, Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent, George Bellows, Robert Henri, William Glackens, and others at a time when American art was underappreciated and much undervalued. Those artists have since proved to be some of the most crucial in the development of American painting.

The Mitchells inspired other downstate Illinois residents to collect American art as well. By the 1950s, a handful of families in this farming and coalmining region owned works of American art that museums and art galleries were increasingly eager to acquire. As interest in American art deepened in the 1960s, the Mitchells founded the John R. and Eleanor R. Mitchell Foundation for the purpose of building a museum on their 80-acre estate in Mt. Vernon. Eleanor Mitchell passed away in 1968, and John Mitchell died in 1971, but by then their dream of enriching the cultural life of southern Illinois was well underway. In 1973, the Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts was opened to the public, with the Mitchells’ collection of American paintings and drawings as the centerpiece of a vital new institution.

This body of work has virtually never been seen outside the Cedarhurst gates. Organized by Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst Center for the Arts, and toured by International Arts & Artists, From Cassatt to Wyeth offered a rare opportunity for those outside Mt. Vernon, Illinois, to view these American treasures.

Carol Brown Goldberg

Carol Brown Goldberg: Recent Works

“With their gestural brushstrokes atop grids of colored dots, Carol Brown Goldberg’s recent paintings are a sort of marriage of abstract expressionism and op art. But that hardly explains the appeal of these captivating canvases, which are precisely rendered and grandly romantic.”

– Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, January 8, 2013

“In her paintings she repeats her particles implicitly beyond infinity. When one looks closely at those circles, which we could imagine to be musical notes, it seems as if we are listening to those notes.”

– Guadalupe Loaeza, El Norte, “El caos y la belleza,” October 10, 2009

This exhibition of Carol Brown Goldberg’s recent work features more than 30 paintings, sculptures, and video that examine the themes of light, color and repetition that unite her oeuvre. Goldberg’s preoccupation with physics and the cosmos, especially her fascination with circles and their elemental nature, informs her work across a range of media. Her approach is both meditative and meticulous: what appears in her art to be most free and chaotic soon reveals its deeper purpose when viewed in the context of her painstaking artistic method. The Color of Time, a video piece, acts both as the artist’s statement and as a framework for all the work in the exhibition. The video recently won the Award for Excellence in the Best Shorts Competition in La Jolla, California.

Goldberg produced and curated a 14-part lecture series, “Voices of Our Time,” which explored the relationship between art and science. She has taught at American University and University of Maryland, was Artist in Residence at Chautauqua Institute, and is the recipient of the Maryland State Arts Award.

Jack Rasmussen, director and curator of the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center since 2002, has curated the exhibition. The Katzen Center for the Arts at the American University Museum will host the exhibition in 2017 after the national tour. Goldberg’s works are in the permanent collections of the New Orleans Museum of Art and National Museum of Women in the Arts, as well as outdoor sculpture installations at The Kreeger Museum, the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, and George Washington University.

Archipenko

Archipenko: A Modern Legacy

“Archipenko was a leading force in French Cubism, Italian Futurism and German Expressionism, as well as with organizations including the Section d’or, Der Sturm and the Société Anonyme. His art is celebrated internationally.”

“Most notably, he integrated negative space as a sculptural form, reintroduced color into sculpture, employed concave and convex shapes to abstract the human figure, and brought mixed media to the field.”

- Alexandra Keiser

Archipenko: A Modern Legacy offers a fresh assessment of Alexander Archipenko, a pioneer of modern sculpture. Featuring more than 50 sculptures, mixed media reliefs, and works on paper, the exhibition spans Archipenko’s entire career. The exhibition highlights the artist’s manifold abstractions of the figure and the breadth of his creative legacy that has informed our thinking of modern sculpture in the discernible constant of the Archipenko style.

This is a major retrospective exhibition of the life and work of Alexander Archipenko, a maverick in modern sculpture, whose creations remain as important today as they were when they were initially conceived in the twentieth century. Drawn from major museum collections as well as private holdings, the exceptional objects chosen for this exhibition will convey the richness of Archipenko’s vision as a innovator of modern art. In addition to the art works, never-before exhibited examples from the artist’s archives, including annotated photographs of sculptures, sketches, installation views, patent drawings for his machine “Archipentura,” and lecture transcripts, will offer an unprecedented view into the artist’s creative process and philosophy.

Since 2002, Alexandra Keiser is the research curator at the Archipenko Foundation, where her responsibilities include the preparation of the Archipenko Sculpture Catalogue Raisonné. She received her M.A. from the University in Trier, and her PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

Pan American Modernism

Pan American Modernism: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America and the United States

“Pan American Modernism clearly demonstrates the aesthetic dialogue among diverse movements and creators: Cuban avant-garde, Mexican muralism, American abstract expressionism, among others. Also explored is the impact of geometric abstraction, a tendency that left an important legacy in South America, as well as an influence on movements like Constructivism, Minimalism and Op Art.”

– Ashley Knight, Art Districts Guide Magazine

Featuring the work of 43 Latin American artists and 26 artists from the United States, Pan American Modernism explores the rich visual dialogue that flourished between artworks of 13 countries in North, South, and Central America in the six turbulent decades between 1919 and 1979. Rather than perpetuate a North American-centric hegemony, which tends to diminish and polarize works of art produced by Latin American artists, the exhibition analyzes how Pan American artistic exchanges, rather than stylistic transmission, have informed a fuller understanding of Modernism as an international phenomenon across the Americas.

Developed by the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami, Pan American Modernismshowcases more than 70 important works of art, many of which have not been previously exhibited. This exhibition includes paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photography, and mixed media works that represent the Lowe’s diverse, multicultural holdings. Several influential Pan American artists are represented, including Eduardo Abela, Romare Bearden, Fernando Botero, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, Joaquín Torres-García, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Lee Krasner, Wifredo Lam, Roberto Matta, Robert Motherwell, Gordon Matta-Clark, Amelia Peláez, Man Ray, Diego Rivera, Ben Shahn, and Edward Weston, among many others. The inclusion of such seminal artists casts a provocative focus on the intricacies of Mexican muralism, abstract expressionism, modernist photography, and geometric abstraction in constructivism, minimalism, and optical art to explore commonalities and disconnects throughout the Americas.

Curated by Dr. Nathan Timpano, Assistant Professor, Department of Art and History at University of Miami, Pan American Modernism is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog published by Lowe Art Museum, with essays by Nathan Timpano, Edward J. Sullivan, and Heather Diack.