May 2011

Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC, Offers Exhibit Open to NC Artists

For 24-hours The Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, NC, will receive one original work of art from each artist, beginning May 6 at 5pm. There are no jurors and no fees. The exhibit, State of the Art/Art of the State is a premier state-wide event and exhibition featuring top curators from the Tate Modern, London and Guggenheim Museum, New York. The 24-hour event is followed by the exhibition opening, May 7, from 6-9pm. The exhibit will continue through Oct. 30, 2011.

Artists will have the opportunity to meet the curators from New York and London, visit with fellow artists and together enjoy live music, performing artists, spoken word and more. The exhibition is open to all artists, 18 years or older, who live in, or are native to, the state of North Carolina.

This event pays homage to the open, creative curatorial spirit of the late art world maverick, Walter Hopps (1932-2005). In 1978, responding to a comment from his junior colleague, Deborah Velders (Jensen) about the problems artists face gaining access to notable curators, Hopps conceived an entirely open, unmediated event to remedy the situation. His program invited any artist to bring a single work of art, to meet Hopps, and see installation of their work. This event called “36 Hours” occurred in a gritty, street-level alternative space called MOTA (Museum of Temporary Art), located in downtown Washington, DC. There was no jurying, no selection (or rejection), and no entry fee. The only restrictions were size (work needed to fit through the door), weight (regarding transporting/placing and support capacity), and the short delivery time frame. This unprecedented opportunity for artists was covered by the Washington Post, and attracted over 400 works of art, all by artists living and working in the Washington, DC, area.

Participating curators include: Susan Davidson: Senior Curator, Collections & Exhibitions, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and Nicholas Cullinan: Curator of International Modern Art, Tate Modern, London.

Before joining the Guggenheim, Davidson was collections curator at the Menil Collection, Houston, TX, for 18 years. Davidson’s research areas include Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art, and she specializes in the art of Robert Rauschenberg. Her most recent exhibitions and catalogues include: Robert Rauschenberg: Gluts; Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation; No Limits, Just Edges: Jackson Pollock Paintings on Paper; Peggy and Kiesler: The Collector and the Visionary (The Story of Art of This Century); and American Pop Icons. Davidson holds advanced degrees in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and George Washington University, Washington, DC.

Nicholas Cullinan has worked on exhibitions including Duchamp, Man Ray, Picabia; Cy Twombly: Cycles and Seasons, and Pop Life: Art In A Material World. He has previously worked at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Guggenheim Museums in New York, Bilbao and Venice. He writes regularly for journals including Artforum, The Burlington Magazine, Frieze and October and is currently working on a monograph on Cy Twombly for Phaidon and a book on Robert Rauschenberg’s photography for Schirmer/Mosel. Among other projects, he is curating Tacita Dean’s Unilever installation for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and the exhibition Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters at Dulwich Picture Gallery, both of which open in 2011. Cullinan completed his PhD on Arte Povera at the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.

For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 910/395-5999 or visit (www.cameronartmuseum.com).

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