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May Issue 2009
Weatherspoon
Art Museum & Downtown Greensboro Bring Tape Art Installation
to Center City Greensboro, NC
This
May, downtown Greensboro, NC, may (temporarily) look a little
different thanks to a special collaboration between the Weatherspoon
Art Museum, Downtown Greensboro Inc., and the ArtBeat Greensboro
Festival. During the Festival the first week in May, artist Michael
Townsend will create a series of public tape art drawings on the
facades of downtown retail shops, restaurants, and other highly
trafficked areas that will bring the community together in a unique
way. The project is entitled, Tape Art: Drawn Together,
will be on view from May 1 - 8, 2009. Some may remember Townsend's
tape drawings on the exterior of the Weatherspoon Art Museum in
2003.
The Weatherspoon has been working with Downtown Greensboro, Inc. (DGI) to identify various center city buildings and businesses for this special installation. Site and times will be listed on the DGI and Weatherspoon websites, while community collaborators will Twitter about the installations. The public is welcome to watch the installation in progress.
Townsend will give a public talk on his Greensboro project, Drawn Together, at the Museum on May 7, 6:30pm and will lead a public "art removal" gathering on May 8, beginning at noon.
Visit the following sites for information on the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Michael Townsend, Downtown Greensboro Inc., the ArtBeat Festival and Elsewhere Artist Collaborative: (http://weatherspoon.uncg.edu), (www.tapeart.com), (www.downtowngreensboro.net), (www.artbeatgreensboro.org) or (www.elsewhereelsewhere.org).
The Weatherspoon Art Museum at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro acquires, preserves, exhibits, and interprets modern and contemporary art for the benefit of its multiple audiences, including university, community, regional, and beyond. Through these activities, the museum recognizes its paramount role of public service, and enriches the lives of diverse individuals by fostering an informed appreciation and understanding of the visual arts and their relationships to the world in which we live.
The Weatherspoon Art Museum was founded by Gregory Ivy in 1941 and is the earliest of any art facilities within the university system. The museum was founded as a resource for the campus, community, and region and its early leadership developed an emphasis - maintained to this day - on presenting and acquiring modern and contemporary works of art. A bequest in 1950 from the renowned collection of Claribel and Etta Cone, which included prints and bronzes by Henri Matisse and other works on paper by American and European modernists, helped to establish the Weatherspoon's permanent collection. Other prescient acquisitions during Ivy's tenure included a 1951 suspended mobile by Alexander Calder, Woman by Willem de Kooning, a pivotal work in the artist's career that was purchased in 1954, and the first drawings by Eva Hesse and Robert Smithson to enter a museum collection.
In 1989, the museum moved into its present location in The Anne and Benjamin Cone Building designed by the architectural firm Mitchell Giurgula. The museum has six galleries and a sculpture courtyard with over 17,000 square feet of exhibition space. The American Association of Museums accredited the Weatherspoon in 1995 and renewed its accreditation in 2005.
The permanent collection of the Weatherspoon Art Museum is considered to be one of the foremost of its kind in the Southeast. It represents all major art movements from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Of the nearly 4,800 works in the collection are pieces by such prominent figures as Willem de Kooning, Eva Hesse, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Cindy Sherman, Al Held, Alex Katz, Henry Tanner, Louise Nevelson, Mark di Suvero, Deborah Butterfield, and Robert Rauschenberg. The museum regularly lends to major exhibitions nationally and internationally.
The Weatherspoon also is known for its adventurous and innovative exhibition program. Through a dynamic annual calendar of fifteen to eighteen exhibitions and a multi-disciplinary educational program for audiences of all ages, the museum provides an opportunity for audiences to consider artistic, cultural, and social issues of our time and enriches the life of our university, community, and region.
For further information
check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at
336/334-5770 or visit (http://weatherspoon.uncg.edu).
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