El Anatsui à la Mode

May 7, 2012 – 2:12 pm

I’ve overheard people in the gallery looking at the wall sculptures in our current exhibition and saying, “I want to touch them.”

I look at them and think, “I want to wear them.”

The sartorial quality of his work struck me from my first gallery visit, and I continue to see the rich textures, colors, and languages of Africa embodied by his work (and not just the wall sculptures) all around me. Click through the image below to see the “Anatsui Style” Pinterest board, a visual sampling of my mind since the exhibition’s opening.

The result has emboldened my own fashion sense, boosted my creativity, and changed (erased?) my concept of what constitutes a coordinated outfit.

Can I pull off bright red with bright yellow? Mixed metals? Pattern on pattern?

Why, sure. That’s very Anatsui of you, Natalie.

Are you on Pinterest? Follow ncartmuseum. Join us for a Pinterest-themed meetup on Thursday, May 10.

By Natalie | Posted in Exhibitions, Staff Voices | Tagged | Comments (3)

    The Uncrowned Queen Returns

    May 4, 2012 – 11:41 am

    Recent conservation work on the NCMA’s Barbara Villiers, later Duchess of Cleveland has dramatically transformed its appearance. The painting came to the Museum in 1959, but because of poor condition, it has rarely seen the light of day. It has not been on view since the collection moved from downtown Raleigh to the Blue Ridge Road site in 1983. The portrait, which dates from roughly 1665, is attributed to the studio of Peter Lely (1618– 1680). Lely was a Dutch painter who went to England about 1641 and succeeded Van Dyck (who died in that year) as the leading painter at the English court and the most fashionable portraitist in England. Read More »

    By Perry | Posted in Collection, Conservation, Staff Voices | Comments (0)

      How do YOU say…El Anatsui

      April 27, 2012 – 9:19 pm

      How do YOU say…El Anatsui from the North Carolina Museum of Art on Vimeo.

      NCMA staff members show off the many variations of “El Anatsui.”

      ncartmuseum.org/elanatsui

      By Chad | Posted in Exhibitions, Staff Voices | Tagged | Comments (0)

        Celebrating People in Action

        April 18, 2012 – 12:18 pm

        This week the nation honors the thousands of volunteers who selflessly aid the ever-growing number of organizations providing critical services and programs to our citizens. This year’s National Volunteer Week theme is Celebrating People in Action. I can think of no more deserving group of people to celebrate than our very own volunteer corps.

        Since the very beginning of the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Museum has relied heavily upon the dedication and generosity of hundreds of volunteers who come together each year with a common passion for our institution. As the Museum has grown, this volunteer corps has enlarged to meet our expanding campus and programs.

        Today volunteers and docents number more than 550 strong—significantly more than the Museum’s combined State and Foundation staffs. Last year alone these dedicated groups of people contributed 16,000 hours of service. This year with a burgeoning schedule of programs and a blockbuster exhibition that ushered 150,000 people through the doors, that number will only grow. It is no exaggeration to say the Museum could not operate without this incredible group of dedicated individuals.

        It has been a true honor to work closely with this passionate team. I am humbled by the generosity and sheer tenacity of these fabulous professionals. No job is too big or small. Every visitor and member is important. Smiles abound, with little fanfare or appreciation for their tireless efforts. What unsung heroes! And binding us all together is a shared vision for this Museum and its outreach.

        So this year as we Celebrate People in Action, let us simply say thank you. Thank you for all that you do and all that you are. You are truly indispensable to us all!

        Caterri Woodrum is the chief deputy director and chief financial officer for the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation.

        Image: (left) Volunteers work on weekly membership mailings. (right) Volunteer Sylvia Gill takes tickets at Rembrandt in America.

        By Guest | Posted in People, Staff Voices, Volunteers | Comments (0)

          A Fresh Crop of Park Pictures

          April 12, 2012 – 12:06 pm

          Spring means a number of things: mild weather, beautiful flowers, fresh berries, and—three new visions for our exciting Park Pictures project. As you may remember, our Pictures are three billboards installed along the paved walking trails, commissioned by the Museum to encourage visitors to explore the art in the Museum Park. We switch them out regularly to feature new works by different artists from North Carolina and beyond.

          Last fall UNC grad Carolyn Janssen created three billboards featuring digitally manipulated worlds filled with marauding Amazons, in environments that were both strange and appealing. This spring we’ve opted to do something entirely new: we invited college students to submit images and ideas for billboards. And what a response we received! After sorting through all the entries, we chose three artists: Sydney Cobb (Alamance Community College), Isaiah Johnson (St. Augustine’s College), and Cindy Kohnen (Meredith College).

          Cobb’s billboard, Fireflies, refers to a favorite Southern pastime. “This piece portrays a childhood memory of catching mystical fireflies in one of my grandma’s mason jars,” Cobb says. “I always loved opening the jar and watching them fly away.” Cobb notes that our current exhibition, El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa, provided inspiration. “My piece is a free-flowing and natural piece, much like his artwork.”

          Johnson’s winning entry, One Brick, One Seed, is a photographic manifesto about the linked urban and natural landscapes. “I didn’t want to be literal with nature and all the beautiful aspects of it, but to show the evolution of today’s world through one brick and one seed,” Johnson says. “This piece was inspired by the beginning of life itself, the buildings we live in, and the hands that built them. From that first hammer or screw, their constructions offer limitless inspiration. The components of this piece are the forest and the cityscape. The trees were placed above the buildings to highlight the line between two different worlds that are also closely related.”

          Kohnen’s Cycles presents, in her words, “the different stages of life after death.” Kohnen explains, “I chose the white and pink petals to show the beauty in life but paired these elements with dirt to convey the sense of a fallen petal to the ground. As spring turns to fall, leaves also observe the remaining life in nature’s dying elements. The third [segment] shows the reincarnation of the dead petals and leaves through the image of live mushrooms and their roots. The repetition of the circular formation created with grass embraces earth’s life cycle. I used color throughout this series to depict and stages of human life, starting with birth, softness, and purity, and ending with wisdom, age, and decomposition.”

          Congratulations to our three winners, and thanks to all our participants! Be sure to explore our Museum Park to view these billboards, and come back in the fall to experience a new round of Park Pictures.

          This work, made possible by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, is part of an ongoing series of outdoor art projects, Art Has No Boundaries, commissioned by the NCMA to encourage visitors to actively explore the Museum Park.


          Images and captions:

          Top: Sydney Cobb, Fireflies, 2011, digital print on vinyl, © 2011 Sydney Cobb

          Cindy Kohnen, Cycles, 2011, digital print on vinyl, © 2011 Cindy Kohnen

          Isaiah Johnson, One Brick, One Seed, 2011, digital print on vinyl, © 2011 Isaiah Johnson

          By Jen | Posted in Park | Tagged , | Comments (1)

            Imitation, the Sincerest Form of Flattery

            April 5, 2012 – 5:12 pm

            Perry Hurt, associate conservator at the NCMA, has been intimately involved in the installation and display, and now the ongoing maintenance, of El Anatsui’s Lines That Link Humanity. Perry sums up the experience of working with this wall sculpture and also taps the experience of conservators at other museums in an article for PACCIN (Preparation, Art Handling, and Collections Care Information Network).

            As part of his study of Anatsui’s work, Perry created a small model of a metal wall sculpture using similar materials (metal wine bottle caps and 24-gauge wire). He cut and flattened the caps into strips about 2 inches long by ¾ inch wide, then poked holes in the strips and joined them with the copper wire.

            This not only gave him insight into the artist’s processes but also provides a useful educational tool that can be handled by the public (unlike Anatsui’s work or any other art in the Museum). Examining Perry’s creation, one can experience firsthand the skill and ingenuity behind the construction—as well as its fragility.

            The piece has sharp edges that can’t be removed or filed down, as the metal bottle caps are too thin. Perry has found that sharp edges are part of the handling experience of a real El Anatsui work, too; gloves can be shredded, clothing gets snagged, and the wall sculpture can snag on itself when being moved.

            Each section of the finished model fits into a 1-gallon plastic zipper bag to protect the “viewer” from the sharp edges and to permit handling of the work in educational settings.

            The exhibition El Anatsui: When I Last Wrote to You about Africa is on view in East Building through July 29; the Museum’s own El Anatsui work, Lines That Link Humanity, is part of the permanent collection in West Building. For more on Perry’s work with El Anatsui, check out the interview on nc artblog (Part I and Part II).

            By Perry | Posted in Conservation, Exhibitions | Tagged | Comments (0)

              New Contest Open to Teens

              March 26, 2012 – 4:33 pm

              Detail of After the Mona Lisa 2, Sperber

              Visitors to the Museum always delight in discovering Devorah Sperber‘s After the Mona Lisa 2 in the permanent collection. Sperber used an amazing  5,184 spools of thread to re-create Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting, the Mona Lisa. Her piece explores the reproduction of images in the digital era, the links between art and technology, and visual perception (how the eye and the brain make sense of the visual world).

              Taking a popular image and manipulating it into something new is a way both to honor the masters of art and to express personal creativity. This echoes the reason we developed our Teens, Inspired blog and our annual Teen Art and Video Competition. Sperber’s work inspired 2010’s first-place winner, Virginia Niver, who recently graduated from Broughton High School in Raleigh. Niver’s submission, made from M&M’s, is a great example of how a high school student can reinvent a piece from the NCMA’s permanent collection. Current students are invited to submit art or video entries to this year’s competition. For details on how to do that, visit Teens, Inspired.


              Today’s guest contributor is Sydney Snedeker, who will graduate from Apex High School in May and plans to attend the University of Texas to major in public relations. Sydney is a member of the Museum’s Teen Advisory Council and is the intern responsible for managing the Teens, Inspired blog. The blog contains posts by Sydney and other members of the Teen Advisory Council as well as images of works from last year’s Teen Art Competition.

              By Guest | Posted in Education, Uncategorized, Visitor Voices | Comments (0)

                Sargent’s Israel and the Law

                March 20, 2012 – 3:06 pm

                In the fall of 2010, I received a call out from a man inquiring if we would be interested in a painting by Sargent—John Singer Sargent (1856–1925), the most celebrated portrait painter of the Gilded Age, a wizard with a brush who could transform parvenus into aristocrats and aristocrats into royalty. Would we be interested in a Sargent? [Pause.] Yes, of course—very interested. Who is the sitter, I asked. The caller then told me that the painting he owned was not a portrait. It was much rarer. It was a large oil study for one of Sargent’s mural paintings in the Boston Public Library. The caller went on to explain that he had acquired the painting a few years before from a Boston art gallery. He enjoyed researching the painting but now felt that he needed to find a permanent home for it. As a frequent visitor to the NCMA, he told me that he was always impressed by the Museum’s Judaic Art Gallery. That an art museum would have such a gallery inspired him to pick up the phone and offer us the painting. You see, he said, my painting is a study for the mural titled Israel and the Law.

                Read More »

                By John | Posted in Collection, Curatorial | Tagged | Comments (0)

                  Installing El Anatsui

                  March 16, 2012 – 2:19 pm

                  Installing Stressed World from The North Carolina Museum of Art on Vimeo.

                  The installation of the largest wall sculpture in the exhibition is a delicate affair. The process was captured over three days.

                  ncartmuseum.org/elanatsui

                  By Chad | Posted in Conservation, Exhibitions, New Media | Tagged | Comments (0)

                    Torah Silver Combines Beauty and History

                    March 8, 2012 – 4:41 pm

                    Who would have imagined that treasures of English Judaica would end up in North Carolina? In mid-January we placed on display in the Judaic Art Gallery a major new acquisition: Torah ornaments from the Orthodox Synagogue of Plymouth, England. Consisting of silver and gilt finials (rimmonim) and matching pointer (yad), these superb pieces are among the earliest complete sets of English Torah silver.  How did they come to North Carolina?  Therein lies a tale. But first, some background.

                    The Orthodox Synagogue in Plymouth lays claim to being “the oldest Ashkenazi synagogue in the English-speaking world still in regular use.” Founded by German and Dutch immigrants, the synagogue was built in 1762 by carpenters and other artisans from the nearby shipyards of the Royal Navy. Though never large, the Plymouth Jewish community attained a degree of prosperity that is reflected in the sophistication of the synagogue furnishings and ceremonial art.

                    About 1783—the year the American colonies won their independence—an unknown member of the Plymouth community went to London and commissioned a pair of finials and pointer from John Robins, a silversmith with a fashionable clientele. Robins responded with pieces that in their refined proportions and playful elegance typify the best of Georgian silversmithing. A respected authority on English silver has judged the finials to be “one of the two most effectively original pairs of rimmonim of pure English character made in London in the 18th century.” Whether intended or not, the bulbous shapes of the finials suggest the origin of the term rimmonim—pomegranates. Gilded bells dangle from three tiers of fancifully designed brackets, adding a celestial tinkle to the procession of the Torah scroll during religious services. Topping each finial is a very English hooped crown, symbolizing the sovereignty of the divine word.

                    Read More »

                    By John | Posted in Collection, Curatorial | Tagged | Comments (0)