Did you know that the popular series Art21 features numerous videos about artists in the Nerman Museum’s collection? There are videos about artists Louise Bourgeois, Nick Cave, Do Ho Suh, Keltie Ferris, Kerry James Marshall, Arlene Shechet and more.
Amy Sillman: To Abstract | Art21
New this week there is a video about Amy Sillman, an artist whose work, Elephant, is often feature on tours at the museum. Check it out!
We were lucky enough to have artist Preston Singletary visit the museum to speak at the Kansas Art Education Association conference in 2019 (and to perform with his band Khu.eex!) we were able to sit down with him and ask some questions specifically about the piece in our collection:
When Dyani White Hawk visited fall 2023 (just before she won the MacArther Genius grant!) we were able to sit down and chat about her work in the museum’s collection. A video of her speaking specifically about Untitled (All the Colors), and the transcript, are now available online:
Hallway installation 2024 May (PDF of Labels)
Just outside of the museum’s studio classroom and administrative offices there is an installation of works on paper and a small weaving from the museum’s permanent collection now on view! These works take the place of the Prairie Printmaker works that had been installed in that space since last fall. Stop by and take a look sometime soon, as these works will likely only be on view through summer, getting swapped out in early fall (TBD).
There is also a new work on view in the adult classroom space, a work on paper by Dylan Mortimer (this takes the place of the Emmi Whitehorse). If you missed it back in 2017, we have video of Dylan speaking at the Dazzling Decade exhibition opening (he speaks second, starting at about minute 23).
Fun fact: the hallway is one of the best places to install these smaller scale light-sensitive works in the museum because it has almost no natural light exposure. It is also an area that gets a lot of foot traffic.
You may have noticed that in the last year the Andrzej Zieliński sculpture on campus, ὀμφαλός (Omphalos) Syndrome (2017), was incomplete – the wooden slab at the top and center of the sculpture was missing. This was due to an ongoing restoration effort to install the wooden portion such that it will be highly resistant to wind (this is something we need to be mindful of in Kansas!) The museum’s preparatory team re-installed the wooden portion of the work with a new system securing it to the stone base so that it will now stand the test of time – and 50mph winds!
Check it out next time you are over on that side of campus, near the sports fields and just outside the Career and Technical Education Center (CTEC) building.
The title here ὀμφαλός (Omphalos) Syndrome references the belief (perhaps misguided) that a place of geopolitical power is the most important place in the world. Among the Ancient Greeks, it was believed that the city of Delphi held this central significance. According to myth, Zeus placed the sacred omphalos stone at Delphi, designating it as the center of the Earth. In this sculpture, the wooden slap is placed perpendicular to the large stone base that is perched atop a tangle of bright green metal zigzag lines. Technology is a common theme in Zielinski’s work, and here the arrangement of the parts of the sculpture could suggest a laptop with the screen open and the green maze of lines representing the electrical signals conveying information to and from the device. Is Zielinski suggesting that our devices have become portals to the most significant ‘place’ in our current moment – the online world?
For more information about Zielinski and his inspirations, check out the exhibition page from his 2015 solo exhibition at the Nerman Museum: Andrzej Zielinski · Open Sourced | Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art
The Nerman Museum owns two works by Jeffrey Gibson, the 2024 artist selected to represent the United States during the Venice Biennale. American Girl is currently on view in the George and Floriene Lieberman Gallery.
Jeffrey Gibson, American Girl, 2013, Found punching bag, wool blanket, glass beads, steel studs, artificial sinew, tin jingles and chain
Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Gift of the H Tony and Marti Oppenheimer Foundation
Read more about it: Representing the U.S. and Critiquing It in a Psychedelic Rainbow
You can also learn more about the other piece in our collection, Shield, in this YouTube video:
Jeffrey Gibson, Shield, number 1, 2012, Found wood ironing board, deer hide, nails, acrylic paint, Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Acquired with funds provided by the Barton P. and Mary D. Cohen Art Acquisition Endowment of the JCCC Foundation
If you missed seeing Jason Andrew, manager and curator of the Estate of Elizabeth Murray, speak about her work here at the Nerman Museum Landing on March 23rd, here is an audio recording of the gallery talk (this was on Instagram Live, recorded in the galleries, so the audio is a little echo-y)!
And a transcript of the talk here: Jason Andrew discusses Elizabeth Murray (PDF)
Jason Andrew has lectured, curated, and published extensively on the work and life of Elizabeth Murray. Andrew is the Founding Partner at Artist Estate Studio, LLC, the entity that services the studios of artists and the estates of artists in the management, cataloguing, and promotion of their art and the stewardship of their legacies. Much of his work is the re-discovery of under-recognized artists and the contextualization of their work. He is the founder of the non-profit Norte Maar, now celebrating 20 years, and is the co-owner of the Ausable Theater.
Image credits:
Jason Andrew – Photo: @rosscollab
Artwork: Elizabeth Murray, Landing, 1999, Oil on canvas, 115 x 138″, Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Gift of JCCC Gallery Associates
Bruce Hartman, founding Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Nerman Museum, now retired, discusses four key pieces in our permanent collection, including two currently on view at the Kauffman gallery on the 2nd floor – Dana Schutz’s Surgery and Do Ho Suh’s Some/One.
Susan Tinker discusses her work Garden Series #13, currently on view at JCCC’s dining area in COM 1st floor.
Roger Shimomura, American Infamy, 2006, Acrylic on canvas panels, 61.62 x 100.5″, Collection Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, 2006.15, Acquired with funds provided by JCCC and Marti and Tony Oppenheimer and the Oppenheimer Brothers Foundation
During World War II, the United States government placed into incarceration camps some 110,000 Japanese Americans living along the West Coast. Among them was the Seattle-born Roger Shimomura, whose earliest childhood memories were formed in the Minidoka concentration camp in southern Idaho, where he was sent with his family. Since the late 1970s Shimomura has made hundreds of paintings and prints reflecting on his experience of incarceration, working in a flat, cool style influenced by both American pop art and Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints. American Infamy, from Shimomura’s Minidoka on My Mind series, presents a wide-angle view of the incarceration camp, spread across four vertical panels like a Japanese folding screen and viewed from a traditional Japanese bird’s-eye perspective, as if to emphasize the government’s conception of the incarcerees as essentially Japanese despite their American ways and citizenship. The composition offers numerous colorful glimpses of daily life in the camp, including women doing laundry, a girl jumping rope and people lined up outside the bathroom. These are overshadowed, however, by the ominous black silhouette of an armed guard wielding binoculars at the left, and by the dark clouds that obscure the composition’s base and several parts of the scene above, clearly signaling Shimomura’s critical view of this unjust incarceration.
Roger Shimomura earned his BA from the University of Washington in 1961 and his MFA from Syracuse University in 1969. Shimomura is also a respected printmaker, and JCCC owns several of his prints which are on view in the Carlsen Center’s Works on Paper focus area.
— David Cateforis, 2012