Harvard Art Museums Announce 2015–16 Exhibition Schedule
Over the next 18 months, the Harvard Art Museums will present a series of special and temporary exhibitions and unveil a new commission, all showcasing modern and contemporary art and the unique role of the university teaching museum. From video and multimedia by Jesse Aron Green, to vibrant pop art by Corita Kent, to works by Indigenous artists of Australia, including the first ever comprehensive analysis of the materials they use—these and other upcoming exhibitions will invite visitors to view art in new and different ways.
“While the majority of our installations and programming draw on the historic nature and concerns of our vast permanent holdings, there is clearly a renewed emphasis on modern and contemporary art across all media at the new Harvard Art Museums,” said Thomas W. Lentz, the Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot Director of the Harvard Art Museums. “This reflects the unique opportunities that the art of our time presents within the rich context of historical collections, but also the ever-evolving nature of teaching and learning at a great university, where old and new are in constant dialogue.”
That very dialogue embodies the new commission by Mexican artist Carlos Amorales, on view in the museums’ historic Calderwood Courtyard beginning April 17. Amorales has taken as his starting point the traditional musical triangle and created a kinetic mobile of graduated aluminum shapes that will hang from the rafters of the new glass roof designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. The sculpture is designed to offer a new collective experience for visitors to the museums; all floors of the arcade galleries—and their works on display—will be visible through the web formed by the hanging sculpture.
The museums have also refreshed some current special exhibitions. Twelve works on paper in Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals have been turned to show further relevant sketches by the artist on their reverse, and nine new studies have also been added. Rebecca Horn: “Work in Progress” now features three large-scale Bodylandscapes drawings by the artist, replacing her projected films. A case with three works created during the November activation of Horn’s sculpture Flying Books under Black Rain Painting has also been added.
Below is a partial list of upcoming special and temporary exhibitions as well as further information about the new Amorales commission. Additional programming in the University Galleries will be announced in the coming months. Check our website for all current and past press releases. www.harvardartmuseums.org/about/press-media
Upcoming Exhibitions
Jesse Aron Green: Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik
May 23–August 9, 2015
University Research Gallery, Harvard Art Museums
Jesse Aron Green’s celebrated multi-component installation Ärztliche Zimmergymnastik (Medicalized Indoor Gymnastics) (2008) comprises an 80-minute projected video and associated sculptural and photographic works and drawings, all of which were recently acquired by the Harvard Art Museums. The installation takes as its point of departure a book of the same name by German physician Dr. Daniel Gottlob Moritz Schreber (1808–1861). Schreber’s 1858 publication was a popular manual of exercises prescribed for “the maintenance of health and vigor of body and mind.” Green’s installation elegantly and provocatively explores cultural tropes and ideologies of the disciplined body through the lens of modernist art—its operations and its legacies.
Green’s video presents the 45 exercises explained in Schreber’s book, enacted by 16 male performers on wooden platforms arranged as a 4 × 4 grid. The camera documents their movements in a 360-degree tracking shot, which ends at the same moment the performers finish the exercises. A series of photographs that document each of the 45 exercises, drawings, three concrete sculptures, 16 wooden platforms, and a 24-hour backwards-moving clock in homage to Felix Gonzalez-Torres are also included.
The installation is curated by John Hulsey, a Ph.D. candidate in Harvard’s Film and Visual Studies Program and a curatorial intern in the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museums. The exhibition is made possible by support from the Widgeon Point Charitable Foundation and the José Soriano Fund. Modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.
The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States
May 23–August 9, 2015
University Study Gallery and Art Study Center, Harvard Art Museums
In 2008, the Harvard Art Museums were among the 50 recipients of a national gift program that distributed 2,500 works from Dorothy and Herbert Vogel’s personal collection of contemporary art to museums in all 50 states. The Vogel collection encompasses a broad array of works by conceptual and minimalist artists of the 1970s and ̓80s, including several artists who were not previously represented in the museums’ collections. This exhibition marks the first presentation of the couple’s entire gift to the museums. The works on display in the museums’ University Study Gallery reflect the depth and breadth of the couple’s collection and feature works by Robert Barry, Lynda Benglis, Pat Steir, and Richard Tuttle, and complement the works on view in the Collections Galleries. In addition to the works displayed in the University Study Gallery, prints and drawings by Richard Tuttle will be available in the museums’ Art Study Center, where visitors will be invited to experience the work in quiet contemplation, examining a portfolio in sequence as a collector might. These works will be available for viewing on Mondays from 1 to 4pm, and by appointment.
Organized by Sarah Kianovsky, Curator of the Collection for the Division of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museums. The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States is a joint initiative of the Trustees of the Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection and the National Gallery of Art, with generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The exhibition is made possible by support from the José Soriano Fund. Modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.
Corita Kent and the Language of Pop
September 3, 2015–January 3, 2016
Special Exhibitions Gallery, Harvard Art Museums
Corita Kent (American, 1918–1986) was a Roman Catholic nun, an artist, and an educator. From 1936 to 1968 she lived, studied, and taught at the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles, and headed the art department at the college there from 1964 to 1968, developing many aspects of her signature style while working alongside her students. The screenprints she created during the 1960s are typical examples of pop art, embodying the vivid palette, focus on everyday subjects, and mass-produced quality of ephemeral objects. Corita Kent and the Language of Pop examines Kent’s screenprints as well as her films, installations, Happenings, and her 1971 mural painted on the Boston Gas (now National Grid) tank—a roadside landmark in Boston. The exhibition frames Kent’s work within the pop movement while also considering other prevailing artistic, social, and religious movements of the time. In particular, the exhibition explores how Kent’s work both responded to and advanced changes then facing the Catholic Church, brought about by the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II). More than 60 of Kent’s prints will appear alongside over 60 works of art by her prominent contemporaries such as Jim Dine, Robert Indiana, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, and Andy Warhol.
The accompanying catalogue, published by the Harvard Art Museums and distributed by Yale University Press, offers nearly 90 illustrated entries and 4 essays by distinguished scholars and fills a gap in the scholarship about Kent’s work. The exhibition will travel to the San Antonio Museum of Art (February 13 through May 8, 2016) after its time in Cambridge.
Organized by the Harvard Art Museums and curated by Susan Dackerman, consultative curator of prints, Harvard Art Museums. The exhibition and accompanying publication are made possible by support from the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, Jeanne and Geoff Champion, John Stuart Gordon, and the Harvard Art Museums Mellon Publication Funds, including the Henry P. McIlhenny Fund. Modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.
Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia
February 5–September 18, 2016
Special Exhibitions Gallery, Harvard Art Museums
Everywhen: The Eternal Present in Indigenous Art from Australia will survey contemporary Indigenous art from Australia, exploring the ways in which time is embedded within Indigenous artistic, social, historical, and philosophical life. For Indigenous people, the past is understood to be part of a cyclical and circular order known as the “everywhen”; conceptions of time rely on active encounters with both the ancestral and natural worlds. While the exhibition focuses on the last 40 years of Indigenous art, it also includes historical objects from the rich collections of Harvard Univer¬sity’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology to underscore both the continuity of cultural practice and remarkable adaptive innovations. The exhibition will showcase more than 70 works drawn from public and private collections in Australia and the United States, and will feature many works that have never been seen outside Australia. Large-scale works by many of the most significant Indigenous artists, including Rover Thomas and Emily Kame Kngwarreye (both former representatives at the Venice Biennale), bark painter John Mawurndjul, and visual and performance artist Christian Thompson, are included.
An exhibition of this scope has not been seen in the United States for more than 25 years, and it will reflect the ways in which the art historical landscape has shifted since then. Indigenous art is no longer positioned as “other,” but as another form of contemporary art that demands our critical attention. This exhibition will present an opportunity to introduce audiences to the central role that Indigenous art plays in the global narrative of contemporary art.
The analytical laboratory of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Harvard Art Museums, a world leader in conserva¬tion and conservation science, is also carrying out the first-ever large-scale techni¬cal examination of traditional Indigenous bark paintings as part of the exhibition. Understanding the materials used by the artists will provide enormous insights into the long-standing practices and traditions of Indigenous painting. The accompanying catalogue will contain illustrated entries and essays from an international mix of authors across various disciplines.
Guest curated for the Harvard Art Museums by Stephen Gilchrist, Australian Studies Visiting Curator. Lead support for the exhibition and related research has been provided by the Harvard Committee on Australian Studies and the Harvard Art Museums Mellon Publication Funds, including the Henry P. McIlhenny Fund. Modern and contemporary art programs at the Harvard Art Museums are made possible in part by generous support from the Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Joseph Pulitzer, Jr., Fund for Modern and Contemporary Art.
Special Commission, Art in Public Spaces Initiative
New Sculpture by Carlos Amorales
On display beginning April 17, 2015
Calderwood Courtyard, Harvard Art Museums
Mexican-born artist Carlos Amorales (b. 1970) has created a new mobile sculpture for the Harvard Art Museums’ iconic Calderwood Courtyard. The large-scale sculpture will be suspended from the specially designed kingposts, or steel trusses, that are part of the rafters under the courtyard’s glass roof. The sculpture joins other major works of art from the collections of the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler Museums that have been installed around the courtyard. The placement of these works gives visitors an opportunity to contemplate original works of art from the moment they enter the courtyard, which is accessible without the purchase of gallery admission.
Amorales has taken the traditional musical triangle and created a mobile of suspended aluminum shapes over the courtyard. With 16 triangles of graduated shape and scale, the work creates a visual idea of sound, but it can also be physically activated: on special occasions the sculpture will be played by using a long stick. Amorales conceived of the courtyard sculpture as a means of creating a collective experience for visitors to the museums. Through the work’s suspended forms, the museums’ interior spaces are tied together.
Mary Schneider Enriquez, the Houghton Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Harvard Art Museums, is overseeing the commission of this dynamic sculpture, which is a gift from Leslie Cheek, Jr.
Current Exhibitions
Japanese Genre Painting
Through May 10, 2015
University Teaching Gallery, Harvard Art Museums
A selection of seven works, comprised of folding screens and hanging scrolls from the Edo (1615–1868) and Meiji (1868–1912) periods, showcases a variety of different subjects as well as stylistic development over time in Japanese genre painting. This installation in the University Teaching Gallery serves faculty and students affiliated with Harvard’s Department of History of Art and Architecture (HAA).
Rebecca Horn: “Work in Progress”
Through May 10, 2015
University Research Gallery, Harvard Art Museums
Rebecca Horn’s art can be understood as a “work in progress,” an oeuvre constantly building on itself and drawing from earlier inspiration and production. This exhibition explores this aspect of her art, drawing on recent gifts of the artist including multiples, photographs, and a three-part work that was painted mechanically during the activation of her specially commissioned kinetic sculpture Flying Books under Black Rain Painting (2014), which is installed inside the museums’ new Prescott Street entrance.
World’s Fairs
Through May 10, 2015
University Teaching Gallery, Harvard Art Museums
Featuring a range of objects drawn primarily from the museums’ collections, this installation examines cultural display through the art and architecture of world’s fairs from the mid-19th century to the postwar era. Beginning with the Crystal Palace in London (1851), it explores the history of fairs as artistic and social phenomenon along with how these events were shaped by national identity, ethnicity, social class, race, imperialism, colonialism, and gender issues. This installation in the University Teaching Gallery serves faculty and students affiliated with Harvard’s Department of History of Art and Architecture (HAA).
Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals
Through July 26, 2015
Special Exhibitions Gallery, Harvard Art Museums
Harvard Art Museums’ new presentation of Mark Rothko’s Harvard Murals features innovative, noninvasive digital projection as a conservation approach. The exhibition returns this mural series to public view and scholarship while also encouraging study and debate of the technology. Featuring 38 works from 1961–62, including the murals and many of the artist’s related studies, the exhibition also explores Rothko’s creative process.
About the Harvard Art Museums
The Harvard Art Museums, among the world’s leading art institutions, comprise three museums (the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler Museums) and four research centers (the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies, the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art, the Harvard Art Museums Archives, and the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis). The Fogg Museum includes Western art from the Middle Ages to the present; the Busch-Reisinger Museum, unique among North American museums, is dedicated to the study of all modes and periods of art from central and northern Europe, with an emphasis on German-speaking countries; and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum is focused on Asian, ancient, and Islamic and later Indian art. Together, the collections include approximately 250,000 objects in all media. The Harvard Art Museums are distinguished by the range and depth of their collections, their groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original research of their staff. Integral to Harvard University and the wider community, the museums and research centers serve as resources for students, scholars, and the public. For more than a century they have been the nation’s premier training ground for museum professionals and are renowned for their seminal role in developing the discipline of art history in the United States.
The Harvard Art Museums’ recent renovation and expansion builds on the legacies of the three museums and unites their remarkable collections under one roof for the first time. Renzo Piano Building Workshop’s responsive design preserved the Fogg Museum’s landmark 1927 facility, while transforming the space to accommodate 21st-century needs. Following a six-year building project, the museums now feature 40 percent more gallery space, an expanded Art Study Center, conservation labs, and classrooms, and a striking new glass roof that bridges the facility’s historic and contemporary architecture. The new Harvard Art Museums’ building is more functional, accessible, spacious, and above all, more transparent. The three constituent museums retain their distinct identities in this new facility, yet their close proximity provides exciting opportunities to experience works of art in a broader context. www.harvardartmuseums.org
Hours and Admission
Daily, 10am–5pm. Closed major holidays. Admission: $15 adults, $13 seniors (65+), $10 non-Harvard students (18+). Free for members; youth under 18; Cambridge residents; and Harvard students, faculty, and staff (plus one guest). On Saturdays, from 10am–noon, Massachusetts residents receive free admission. Visit our website for information about other discounts and policies. www.harvardartmuseums.org/plan-your-visit
Exhibitions, Events, and News
Our Special Exhibitions Gallery presents important new research on artists and artistic practice, and our University Galleries are programmed in consultation with Harvard faculty to support coursework. www.harvardartmuseums.org/visit/exhibitions
Lectures, workshops, films, performances, special events, and other programs are held throughout the year at the museums. www.harvardartmuseums.org/visit/calendar
Check out Index, our multimedia magazine, to keep up with what’s happening at the Harvard Art Museums. http://magazine.harvardartmuseums.org()
The Harvard Art Museums receive support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
For more information, please contact:
Jennifer Aubin
Public Relations Manager
Harvard Art Museums
617-496-5331
jennifer_aubin@harvard.edu()