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July Issue 2005
Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, Presents Five Exhibits this Summer
One of the five exhibitions on view this summer at the Weatherspoon Art Museum is A Window on the West: California Art from the Permanent Collection, on view through Sept. 4, 2005.
The East Coast has always seen the West Coast as a very different part of America, with a different geography, climate, and culture. This exhibition examines what appears unique and special in West Coast art, as well as what may seem familiar and shared. Twenty-two paintings and works on paper are included by well-known Californians from the Museum's collection including such well-known artists as Stanton Macdonald-Wright, Paul Wonner, David Park, Ed Ruscha, Jay DeFeo, Joan Brown, and Wayne Thiebaud among others.
Tam Van Tran
Abstract painting thrives today in numerous forms and approaches. Its contemporary adherents often ignore traditional distinctions between figuration and abstraction, and between painting and other art forms. Around About Abstraction, on view through Oct. 2, 2005, includes the work of six artists - Ingrid Calame, Andrew Masullo, Yunhee Min, Carrie Moyer, Donald Moffett and Tam van Tran - whose approaches to abstraction offer an opportunity to engage with the invigorated state in which contemporary painting currently resides.
A solo exhibition by artist Emil Lukas is on view through Sept. 18, 2005. Lukas employs the complex and unpredictable forces of gravity, light, and chemical reaction to alter simple materials like plaster and paper. It is when these unknowable forces exert their influence that a pivotal moment of process occurs. In this way, Lukas constantly tests and expands the parameters of the materials he uses in his art.
Birney Imes
Birney Imes: Juke Joint, on view from July 3 through Sept. 18, 2005, presents the work of one of the finest photographers known in the South. From 1983 to 1989, Imes journeyed throughout the Mississippi Delta tracking stories about the people and music of juke joint nightclubs. Thirty of Imes' s color photographs were selected to illustrate these iconic atmospheres and their inhabitants.
Also opening this summer is the latest installment of American Art I: Selections from the Permanent Collection, 1900-1960, on view from July 17 through Oct. 23, 2005. In 2003, the Weatherspoon inaugurated an annual two-part survey of American art from 1900 to the present. Part one of the survey will again include approximately fifty objects, with new acquisitions and fresh selections of seldom-seen works from the Museum's vault. Elizabeth Catlett's stunning 1952 portrait, Sharecropper, will be among the works of art new to the survey. Another very recent acquisition in the exhibition is a Jackson Pollock drawing from 1939-1940 purchased to honor the memory of Hubert Humphrey, a longtime Museum supporter. This drawing is the first work of art by this major American artist to enter the Weatherspoon collection and is from a series he did inspired by Jungian archetypes, African masks, and surrealism.
In conjunction with the Birney Imes: Juke Joint exhibition, Weatherspoon Art Museum presents the Juke Joint July Film Series. Every Thursday in July at 7pm, the Weatherspoon will feature documentaries on southern juke joints and the people and music that surround them. No ratings. Parental discretion is suggested. Free, with a $2 suggested donation. The Juke Joint July Film Series includes: July 7 - Gospel and Blues, a Spell in the Mississippi Delta - The blues are very much alive in the Delta in local "juke joints." But competition from larger, more urban establishments threatens to close these tiny basement clubs. Visit a Mississippi juke joint where locals play the blues live and dance all night. Directed by Constantine Manos, 1993, 10 minutes.
Also showing July 7 - Richard Johnston: Hill County Troubadour - Richard Johnston of Memphis is known by fans worldwide as an amazing one-man band as well as a talking encyclopedia of northern Mississippi hill country blues. This biographical documentary was directed by Max Shores and premiered on the University of Alabama Center for Public Television in Apr. 2005. 57 minutes.
On July 14 - You See Me Laughin' - Take a journey into the lives and music of the last of the Mississippi hill country bluesmen: farmers and laborers first, musicians second. Travel the road and into the homes of R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, T-Model Ford, Cedell Davis, Johnny Farmer and Asie Payton musicians who've labored for the blues tradition despite lives steeped in poverty and violence. Directed by Mandy Stein. 2002, 77 minutes.
On July 21 - Searching for the Wrong - Eyed Jesus - An intense and odd mixture of film genres comprised of documentary, road movie, and concert film. This is a tour of the South through a world of juke joints, moonlit baptisms, and small-town prisons where everyone including a fiery Pentecostal reverend plays electric guitar. Weatherspoon Art Museum presents the North Carolina debut of filmmaker Andrew Douglas's unusual look at the Deep South. Features Jim White, Harry Crews, David Eugene Edwards, David Johansen and Lee Sexton. 2003, 83 minutes.
On July 28 - Last of the Mississippi Jukes with Deep Blues - Trace the origins of the blues down to the nearly extinct Mississippi juke joints and clubs where many bluesmen like Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson made their names. Veteran music documentary filmmaker Robert Mugge captures the images and essence of the juke joint musical heritage. Narrated by Morgan Freeman, 2003, 86 minutes.
The Weatherspoon Art Museum at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro enjoys a national reputation for its outstanding collections and dynamic exhibition program. Six galleries, a sculpture courtyard, and the atrium feature more than twenty exhibitions throughout the year, offering students, faculty, and the public with ongoing opportunities to see and learn directly from outstanding examples of modern and contemporary art. Educational programs regularly include lectures, tours, films, symposia, workshops, and demonstrations. The Weatherspoon received accreditation from the American Association of Museums in 1995.
For further information check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Museum at 336/334-5770 or at (www.weatherspoon.uncg.edu).
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