When I first visited 0 to 60: The Experience of Time through Contemporary Art as it was being installed, it was a spare group of seemingly incongruent works. It was impossible yet to understand their conversation. I was struck by Lisa Hoke’s organic wall covering, emerging from itself in radiating curls and waves. Kyoung Ae Cho‘s woven pieces, made from silk from corn stalks, were lovely and meditative and focused.

Walking into the installation the following week was a surprise and a joy. Most of the pieces had arrived, and the works were beginning to speak to one another and to me. On my third visit, the exhibition was open to the public, and the show’s message was fully realized.

In the first room are Tim Hawkinson‘s clocks. The old banana peel that ticks struck me as humorous and a bit melancholy, as did the candle with the moving wick. My favorite of his pieces is the medicine cabinet. Each item—an open lotion bottle, dental floss, deodorant—keeps time. Each is disposable, without value, devoid of the preciousness and sentimentality that we attach to so many possessions. But these charming little timepieces speak strongly, advocating the smallest things, showing us how our temporary, quotidian belongings tell the story of us and are keepers of our time. And I loved peeking around back to see the wires and mechanisms that power Hawkinson’s delicate timepieces.

In the next room is Beth Lipman‘s newly installed tower of glass objects, called Bride. It projects solidity despite the fragility of the glass. It held me in both a timeless and a very present space. Because the objects are clear glass, they exist in a fantasy world that cannot be touched, a crystal-magic world of memories and remembered dreams. It is fantasy, but it draws the fantasy out of personal experience. We are responsible for giving the piece meaning, but it happens effortlessly, unconsciously. It’s partially inspired by paintings at the NCMA, and we are very fortunate to have this work joining our permanent collection.

Nearby are Dan Estabrook’s small works on paper. They walk a line between delicate and aggressive. Like mementos or found relics, they hold a dream world’s sense of time and place. They remind me of Dali, with their dreamy surrealism and utter lack of self-consciousness, but the muted and antique tones make them seem like the dreams of people long gone rather than the dreams of the artist.

David Shapiro‘s work is a revealing and piecemeal self-portrait. He saved each receipt and ticket that he got over the course of a year, and then meticulously replicated each one by hand on vellum. It is a type of self-portrait, but it is also universal. He has devoted an exhaustingly large effort to turning average parts of everyday life into art. In another example of tedious and immense effort, Peter Matthews created his works by wading in the ocean for six to 16 hours a day and drawing and writing on a waterproof board whatever came to his mind. The intimate and idiosyncratic worlds he creates are most solitary and an indistinguishable map of one man’s mind.

The exhibition took a turn for me with Do-Ho Suh‘s vinyl house. As I approached, it didn’t particularly grab my attention, but once I walked inside, the exact reproduction of the artist’s first studio apartment in New York City grabbed my heart. It is sweet—not at all in a syrupy way, but in a thoughtful, loving, gentle way. It is not a replica of a house or an apartment. It is a home. It is not our home, but it very much carries the feeling of being our own. And this home can be disassembled, packed into a suitcase, and taken with you. There is a lot of soul in this piece, and it is lovely.

Next I walked under Lisa Hoke’s now-fleshed-out carnival of colors and was struck by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s Last Breath. This breathing machine takes a person’s single breath and recycles and perpetuates it as long as the work is left on. It so moved me, the idea of taking something as personal as a breath and keeping it eternally. The work made me think about the obsessiveness and madness of wanting to hold on to the people we love, and the pain caused by the lingering in some untouchable form after they are gone. Next to this piece is Lozano-Hemmer’s The Year’s Midnight, which I found dark and funny and intriguing.

From here I moved into the last room of the show. It hit me with the full (but quiet) force of the exhibition’s depth and weight. Caetano de Almeida’s pollution drawings are a beautiful and horrifying record of time, the patterns created by leaving stencils on paper on the artist’s balcony in Sao Paolo, the air pollution coloring the paper outside of the stencils. They are evidence of the thoughtless and irreversible scar we ourselves have left on time. David K. Chatt‘s beaded objects are full of melancholy and longing. A stack of letters is sewn into a net of glass beads, bound by padlock, with the key sitting just beneath, rendered inaccessible by the pretty white beads that trap all of the objects. Finally: Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s pile of candy. It is sad, and also generous, and touching. Mortality and immortality collide and contradict one another. Taking a piece can feel greedy and destructive, but mostly it feels like a gift, and humbling.

Being acquainted with the artists and their work before the exhibition did not prepare me for what each piece, taken together and as a whole, would say. Time touches and works on us each in a different way. Yet these artists have found a way to harness their unique relationship with time and create experiences that can be understood by all. I found 0 to 60 melancholy, and also gentle and hopeful and universal. I hope it is as pleasant and rewarding an experience for you as it was for me.

Catherine Smith is a curatorial intern at the NCMA.

Artist Lisa Hoke installed a site-specific work of art over the course of ten days for the exhibition 0 to 60: The Experience of Time through Contemporary Art.

What separates a great photograph from a snapshot?

In our online Art of Photography course, students learn that good design doesn’t just happen. A snapshot captures a moment, whereas a great photograph captures it beautifully by being composed. All of the elements are chosen and arranged to fit together. Elements such as line, texture, and pattern can add visual interest and heighten a photograph’s drama.

The students discussed examples from photographers Pamela Pecchio and Aaron Siskind, whose work is in our permanent collection, exploring how actual and implied texture can create a visually engaging image, and also created photographs of their own.

Examine these images and consider students’ choices in composing each photograph. Whether you notice the skewed worm’s-eye view of brightly patterned ribbons or the rhythmic patterns of leaves growing between pipes, your eye is drawn through the composition.

The students’ work will be on display in the Museum’s Education Lobby from January 11 through April 14. Pecchio’s work is featured in the exhibition Dwelling: Interiors by Page H. Laughlin and Pamela Pecchio, opening February 10 in the adjacent North Carolina Gallery.

Art of Photography is one of five online semester courses offered through the Museum that students can take for high school credit.

“The submerged bit of the museum is much more of an iceberg than [a] picture gallery.”—Neil MacGregor, director, British Museum

Would you believe that work on our exhibitions often starts years before you see the works on the wall? At the NCMA, as at the British Museum, there is more going on behind the scenes than you might expect. Our fall college exhibition, A Life, Still, offered one group of college students an opportunity to dive under the iceberg to see what happens behind an exhibition.

Months before the opening of the college exhibition (planned to complement the special exhibition Still-Life Masterpieces), Museum educators started collaborating with students and faculty at East Carolina University through “Under the Iceberg,” a program designed to give students a hands-on experience of planning and curating an exhibition. The development of A Life, Still included large- and small-scale projects, from deciding on the exhibition theme and marketing the call for submissions to selecting the final works and arranging them in a thoughtful visual narrative.

ECU senior Anna Hajjar took away a better understanding of the resources required to put on an exhibition, noting that she had never before considered spatial limitations and obstacles, museum aesthetics, and promotion when imagining the exhibition process. She noted, “It’s not just about finding artwork and nailing it on the wall.”

For artist Kendall Temotio, a senior at ECU, the best part of the experience was “being on the other side of the table.” Temotio said, “Usually I’m the one submitting my work and waiting at home to hear the results. It was interesting to see how decisions are ultimately made. Now I can look at my own work when it is declined or accepted and better understand why or how the selections may have occurred.”

ECU senior Abigail Jones noted the importance of their cumulative decisions: “Everything from writing the wall texts to judging the works of art to understanding the layout of the show affects how well and smoothly the exhibition process will run.”

Collaborating with the Museum, these students helped recruit over 180 submissions from across the globe (172 two-dimensional, 12 video). The resulting collection represents college students from 21 universities, 13 states, and two continents. Visit the exhibition blog or see the show in person at the Museum through January 13.

—Michelle Harrell is coordinator of teen and college programs at the NCMA.

The two main factors I consider when I begin a lighting design at the NCMA are art conservation lighting standards and the aesthetics of the exhibition. In my work on Word Up, for example, I collaborated with conservators and exhibition designers to create a lighting plan that adheres to conservation standards while creating an overall feeling for the exhibition.

First I had to consider the effects of light intensity on the works of art. All light sources emit UV radiation that damages both the color and the structure of the materials; the more UV exposure, the faster the deterioration. The highest levels of UV come from daylight, and the lowest come from nonviolet LED sources. The halogen lighting commonly used in galleries falls closer to nonviolet LED UV emittance. Some materials are more susceptible to UV damage, such as textiles and paper, so these cannot be exposed to as much light as, say, marble or bronze. Many of the works in Word Up use layered paper, but the tricky part is that some of the more fragile works are right next to works that can withstand more light. I gently eased the lighting levels up or down, with added light on the walls to balance the look of the overall gallery. When you visit Word Up, notice the difference in lighting levels between the paintings on canvas, such as Nathaniel Lancaster’s Here’s to Coexistence, and works using paper such as Derek Toomes’s Hex #FF00FF.

The second thing I consider is the exhibition aesthetics and layout. I work closely with the exhibition designer and curator to create the environment they envision. For Word Up, a contemporary show, the overall feel of the galleries needed to be bright and evenly washed in light. The designers, Shannon Harris and Eric Gaard, felt that a major design feature for Word Up should be its title wall—the first thing, along with The Campaign by Shaun Richards, that visitors see as they come in the main entrance of East Building. So we started discussing specialty lighting treatments. Using lighting that was originally developed for theatrical purposes, I worked with the graphic designer, Dave Rainey, to develop a one-of-kind pattern for the title wall. It definitely got the reaction we wanted from day one:  every NCMA staff member who wandered by while it was being installed commented on how great it was, even saying it looked like flames of light!

Lighting is a powerful yet subtle design element in the museum environment. The next time you are in one of our galleries, stop and think about the lighting and how it has affected your experience!

Caroline Davenport is the lighting designer in the Exhibition Design Department at the NCMA.

Rarely do we get the chance to stand in another’s shoes, and almost never do we get to see what they see.

When I first saw Dave Rainey’s video, it struck me as a profound commentary on interactions between visitors in the gallery. In the video Dave shares with us how he looks, what catches his eye. He follows skeins of color cascading downward. Then, a bending, warping edge leads the way. A field of crumpled texture dissolves into cracked paint, which fades into metallic lace. These are all personal discoveries, but they are shared with us on the screen. I wouldn’t have noticed them otherwise.

This is just what happens in the galleries. “Come, look at this … look what he used here … see what I found.” Look for yourself, then share, and see through someone else’s eyes as well.

El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa closes July 29.

This exhibition does just that. Throughout his career El Anatsui has used a multitude of materials, and it is through their use that we can see thoughts emerging and forming. We can see these thoughts are not random or fleeting. Ideas and images of the artist’s life and culture are consistently involved.

On view now are works made with a wide variety of materials and techniques. Wood has been carved, assembled, painted, and burned. Metals and fabrics are brought together and blended. Acrylic paints are applied to Masonite and paper and wood. These paints have been applied in a loose and running style—and in other works he uses a more controlled technique and precise style. There are works of ink on paper that relate to works he made in other mediums. One example of this, titled Omen, is part of a series of drawings from 1980 and 1981 exhibited next to a work of the same title made of ceramic and manganese in 1978.

El Anatsui produced other drawings in the more esoteric method of drypoint and aquatint. These are exhibited next to a wall sculpture woven together with aluminum and copper wire. Very different, both are equally beautiful and demonstrate a mastery of materials.

The depth and breadth of materials in this exhibition is impressive, and all are held together by the steady, focused vision of El Anatsui.

—Kathryn Briggs led the design production team for the El Anatsui exhibition.

Image:
El Anatsui, Omen, 1978, ceramic, H. 15 1⁄2 x W. 21 x D. 16 1⁄2 in., Photo courtesy Museum for African Art / Kelechi Amadi-Obi

What I didn’t expect was to be equally, if not more, amazed by the artist’s wooden sculptures.

Like his metal pieces, Anatsui’s wooden works are intricate, beautiful, and imbued with a profound symbolism that relates not only to African culture but to humanity as a whole. I was most awed, however, by the way they echo the wall hangings’ sense of movement and dynamism. Wood loses all of its stiffness and takes on an energetic, lifelike quality: the sculptures that refer to cloth appear to crumple and fold, and another, titled Imbroglio, seems to be actually writhing.

These wooden treasures excited me in a way that sculptures rarely had before. I now have a more open mind about art and look forward to taking many more non-Western courses. I also recognize how important it is to take a deeper look into an artist’s body of work, because sometimes your favorite piece may not be the most well known. Finally, I see how even the most unexpected materials can be turned into something incredibly beautiful—and this, I think, was exactly El Anatsui’s goal in the first place.

—Elana Hain, an art history student at UNC–Chapel Hill and a curatorial intern at the NCMA, is working this summer on research for upcoming contemporary art exhibitions.

Image: El Anatsui, When I Last Wrote to You about Africa, 1986, wood, Private collection, Germany

In some ways Rhythms of the Heart: The Illustration of Ashley Bryan is an ideal exhibition for the NCMA, allowing viewers to make associations between it and El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa. Both are retrospectives of the careers of prolific men—one from North America, the other from Africa. Both El Anatsui and Ashley Bryan are true artistic masters with firm grasps of very different mediums. In El Anatsui’s case, visitors can explore wood sculptures, metal wall sculptures, and drawings, noting that the artist understands and has talent for each mode of creation; Ashley Bryan’s illustrations shine whether made from construction paper cutouts, linoleum prints, or poster paint. And finally, both artists share a deep connection to Africa, which comes across in the colors, subject matter, and design in each of their works.

While you’re visiting these exhibitions, don’t forget to ponder how these exhibitions connect to our permanent collection in West Building, too—the African Gallery and the Modern and Contemporary Galleries provide great starting points for comparison.

Have you visited Rhythms of the Heart yet? What other connections to our permanent collection or Spring–Summer 2012 exhibitions can you make? Leave us a comment below.

Jennifer Dasal is associate curator of contemporary art.

Rhythms of the Heart: The Illustration of Ashley Bryan is organized by the National Center for Children’s Illustrated Literature. This exhibition is made possible, in part, by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources; the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Inc.; and the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment for Educational Exhibitions.

Image: Ashley Bryan, Mountain View, 1967, from Moon, for What Do You Wait? (Atheneum, 1967), linoleum print, 16 ½ x 8 in., Courtesy of the artist, © 1967 Ashley Bryan

Balthasar van der Ast, Still Life with Basket of Fruit, 1622, oil on canvas, 19 1/2 x 32 in., North Carolina Museum of Art, Purchased with funds from the State of North Carolina

What would you expect to cost more: a painting that might last, like this one has, for hundreds of years; or a flower that appeared in the painting, which might bloom for perhaps a week? Today you might hesitate to open your wallet wider for the flower, but there was a time when paintings such as these would have sold for far less than the priciest of blossoms.

In the Netherlands of the 17th century, floral still-life paintings hung in all the best homes from Haarlem to the Hague. The wealth of the burgeoning merchant class fueled the art market, and collectors were keen to show off their worldliness through the exotic and costly objects they acquired in their travels.

One way to demonstrate a cosmopolitan point of view was to display images of unusual flowers. Artists of the day would compose botanical fictions, including flowers that never would have blossomed simultaneously, gathered from far-flung points across the globe. Such images could demonstrate the owner’s refined taste for luxury objects.

How luxurious? According to some estimates, during the height of Dutch “tulip mania,” speculation on a single bulb of the much-coveted Semper Augustus tulip was equal to 30 times a Dutchman’s average annual salary. Purchasing a painting of one of those precious flowers was the closest that many well-to-do merchants might come to tulip ownership.

Jan Jansz. van de Velde, Still Life with Goblet and Fruit, 1656, oil on canvas, 14 ¾ x 13 ¾ in., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Anonymous gift, by exchange

By the time Jan Jansz. de Velde painted the work to the right, however, the tulip market had bottomed out two decades before. The crash left many once-wealthy investors destitute. The impact was certainly felt in the art market. Notice the differences in the two paintings, created just a few decades apart. The earlier work shows a profusion of objects, rendered in exuberant hues. The later image, despite the glittering goblet and the porcelain bowl, is a study in restraint and austerity.

What object is your most prized possession? Do you think you’ll feel the same about it five years from now? What about 10 or 20? Chew on that thought when you come to see Visual Feast, and then be sure to explore our permanent collection to discover what people have valued in different times and places.

Today’s guest contributor is Alana Wolf. A recent Atlanta transplant, Alana founded Public Acts of Art, an organization that showcases site-specific art in unconventional urban spaces. She has worked for the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and contributed to projects for the Art on the Beltline, the City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs, and the Feminist Art Project. As an intern for the Museum’s Education Department, Alana will be researching and writing on this fall’s exhibition Still-Life Masterpieces: A Visual Feast from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Look for more posts by Alana at A Life, Still.