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The Wolfsonian–Florida International University
1001 Washington Avenue, Miami Beach, Fla. 305.531.1001 Map www.wolfsonian.org Exhibitions: Mr Somebody & Mr Nobody Present The Amazing Afro Pop Up Shop LIBERTY, EQUALITY, AND FRATERNITY MANIFEST AND MUNDANE: SCENES OF MODERN AMERICA FROM THE WOLFSONIAN COLLECTION Art and Design in the Modern Age: Selections from The Wolfsonian Collection The Art of Illumination: Illuminating the Arts
A selection of rarely-seen advertisements, guides, and other exceptional materials from The Wolfsonian's Rare Book and Special Collection Library exemplify how wine producers and merchants throughout the world-from Europe to Africa to the Americas-used new printing techniques and marketing strategies to promote vineyards and their yields beginning at the end of the nineteenth century. Among the notable works are rare advertisements by French designers Paul Iribe and Jules Isnard Dransy for Nicolas, and a series of advertising cards promoting Hungarian wines.
“Mr Somebody & Mr Nobody Present The Amazing Afro Pop-Up Shop” is a site-specific installation based on an African market stall. Created by artists Heidi Chisholm and Sharon Lombard, the project proposes a fictional realm with real world implications that tap into the artists shared history as South African expatriates living in America. The Afro Pop-Up Shop and its tongue-in-cheek goods prompt us beyond “Where are you from?” to more complicated questions regarding multiple migrations, invasions, and post-colonial freedom. It is the immigrant’s paean to globalization. Visitors are invited to purchase and take home a piece of the installation; goods are available inside The Wolfsonian’s Museum Shop. All proceeds benefit The Wolfsonian. LIBERTY, EQUALITY, AND FRATERNITY: From the Collection of the Centre national des art plastiques Reception on Friday, December 2, 2011 The Wolfsonian–Florida International University presents Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, an exhibition exploring French cultural identity through design produced from the mid-twentieth century to the present. The exhibition will be on view from November 25, 2011 through March 26, 2012 and is organized by The Wolfsonian from the collection of the Centre national des arts plastiques, France (National Center for Visual Arts or CNAP). The opening of the exhibition will coincide with the celebration of Art Basel Miami Beach/Design Miami 2011. “The French motto—liberté, egalité, fraternité—serves as the conceptual framework for this intriguing exhibition,” notes Marianne Lamonaca, The Wolfsonian’s associate director for curatorial affairs and education. “For Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, we took an entirely new approach to our curatorial practice by engaging in a dynamic dialogue with the French designers and design historian who collaborated with us on this project: matali crasset, Michael Amzalag and Mathias Augustyniak of M/M (Paris), and Alexandra Midal. Together we have shaped a unique presentation of French design objects from the collection of the Centre national des arts plastiques in Paris, France that express ideas about French national identity.” Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity examines the changing political, economic, and cultural contexts in which French design is created and disseminated. It also takes into account the concrete and symbolic impact that design has in shaping perceptions and aspirations. Approximately one hundred and fifty objects will be exhibited, including furniture, industrial design, and craft, created by some of the most celebrated French designers of the past and present, including Pierre Paulin, Roger Tallon, Philippe Starck, and the Bouroullec Brothers, as well as others lesser known in the United States. “The collaboration is a perfect fit for The Wolfsonian and its mission to foster the understanding and appreciation of design as an active agent in human affairs. In tracing an alternative genealogy of French design history from the late 1940s to the present, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity will identify areas of design A note about the display: EXHIBITION CATALOG RELATED EVENTS AND PROGRAMS About the exhibition and publication contributors and designer About the Centre national des arts plastiques (National Center for Visual Arts) At the same time, the Centre supports research and innovation in the arts through research grants awarded to artists involved in experimental work, and financial assistance to professionals in the contemporary arts sector (galleries, producers, restorers, art critics etc.). Its website www.cnap.fr also provides artists, associations, institutions, local authorities and businesses with a platform for information on contemporary art and its economy. The Centre national des arts plastiques is both an institutional intermediary and an economic player in the art world, as well as an active partner in many places where contemporary art is shown. It works with both public (museums, regional contemporary art collections, art centers, national monuments) and private partners (foundations, companies, publishers etc.) to organize exhibitions in France and internationally, and to publish works on contemporary art.
The Wolfsonian–Florida International University presents Manifest and Mundane: Scenes of Modern America from The Wolfsonian Collection, an exhibition of more than fifty American paintings, sculptures, and fine art prints from the 1920s to the 1940s, drawn from The Wolfsonian’s collection of fine arts, with loans from the museum’s founder, Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. On view from September 8, through August 2012, the exhibition explores how artists manifested in their work the most profound and the most mundane aspects of American life. While the artworks provide personal records of the nation, they also express collectively held attitudes about the landscape, the built environment, domestic life, work, and leisure—themes that are prevalent throughout The Wolfsonian’s collection. Many of the works on view in Manifest and Mundane invoke the myth of the landscape as the basis for meditations on national character. “Landscape has long served as a pivotal element in the development of American identity,” notes the exhibition’s curator, Marianne Lamonaca, associate director for curatorial affairs and education. “The land symbolically represents a place of spirituality and renewal but at the same time the land is a place of everyday dwelling, of ordinariness.” Several of the works depict the common course of life: nurturing, constructing, cultivating community, sunbathing, attending a fair. Torvalt Arnt Hoyer’s Barn (1938) conveys the simplicity and tranquility of the countryside, where a lone farmer works, far removed from the turmoil of modern city life. Sunshine Canyon (1936- 39), a print by Carlos Anderson, shows a bird’s-eye view of a New York City rooftop where people of all ages have gathered to rest, sunbathe, and play. Burr Singer’s Missouri Woman (1938), an archetypal image of a strong Midwestern farm woman, is in marked contrast to Francis de Erdely’s The Welder (c. 1942), which depicts a young, bare-chested welder at rest. Singer’s image presents the farm woman as a symbol of American self-sufficiency and hard work, while de Erdely emphasizes the welder’s physical form and inner character as separate from his occupation. Other artworks introduce discord into the workday scene: industry encroaching on the soil, the demands of social justice interrupting domestic order, and disaster disrupting domestic routine. Fire in the Barn (c. 1939) by Lue Osborne shows a mother with her children looking on as men battle a fire that threatens to destroy the family’s property and livelihood. In Steelworker’s Family (1938), Harry Sternberg juxtaposes the activities inside a worker’s home with the bleak industrial setting of blast furnaces, smoke stacks, and ever-present clouds of smoke. Wolfsonian founder Mitchell Wolfson, Jr. gifted many of the artworks in the exhibition to Florida International University in 1997 when he made the landmark donation of his collection, and its historic building, to the state of Florida. For Wolfson, it was “the spiritual manifestation within those objects” that ultimately led him to collect and donate nearly 100,000 works. “I wanted to fathom human behavior and the motivation behind it in each object.” In celebration of the opening of the exhibition, The Wolfsonian will present a curator’s tour with Marianne Lamonaca on September 16, 2011 at 6:30pm, open to Propagandist-level ($125) members and above. A reception begins at 6:30pm, followed by the tour at 7pm. To RSVP, become a member, or change your membership level, contact Ian Rand at 305.535.2631or ian@thewolf.fiu.edu. The Wolfsonian–FIU holds an astounding collection of modern objects—both the rare and the overlooked — from the 1885 to 1945 era, demonstrating the active role design plays in motivating actions, expressing ideas, creating desires, and shaping identities. Exhibition themes underscore designers' responses to new materials and technologies, the role of graphic design as an instrument of political and commercial persuasion, and the nature of state-sponsored public art and architecture programs. In celebration of Art Basel/Miami Beach 2006, The Wolfsonian–Florida International University, a museum dedicated to the examination and appreciation of art and design as an agent and reflection of change, will unveil a new work created by U.S. artist Lawrence Weiner that was commissioned by the museum especially for this occasion. (LO & BEHOLD) (MIRA & VE) is Weiner’s response to the extensive collections found at The Wolfsonian, its location, and its place in its community. His installation will begin on The Wolfsonian façade at Washington Avenue Street and will line the walls of the lobby of the museum, culminating at the lobby fountain. Like much of Lawrence Weiner’s oeuvre, the work is grounded in language and a mix of common signs. The result is a simple structure put before The Wolfsonian public to, literally, (LO & BEHOLD) (MIRA & VE). Its presentation in both English and Spanish, the artist notes, is in recognition of Miami’s diverse culture and its strong Hispanic community. A poster has also been designed by Weiner to mark the occasion of the exhibition and will be available to museum-goers at nominal cost. Lawrence Weiner was born February 10, 1942, in the Bronx, New York. An adventurous youth, Weiner traveled throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico doing odd and occasionally dangerous jobs. His experiences included work as a stevedore, on commercial fishing vessels, and tankers. In the early 1960s he settled back in New York, and set out to make a career as a painter in the downtown art scene. Work from this period included experiments with systematic approaches to shaped canvas. With that work, the interactive, collaborative approach to his work began to develop. The paintings were produced In Weiner's view, his sculpture is three-dimensional; it comprises language and the referenced materials, and this makes his work accessible to the public. Fabrication is crucial to the work; over the years it has taken various forms. He has incorporated his work into film and video scenarios, as songs on records and CDs, as cartoons on DVDs, on posters, books, multiples, and editions, as well as the installations for which he is perhaps best known. From the beginning, however, the work has been realized by literally whomever and whatever has suited the situation best. And so at times, the work has not been built at all. Engagement in new forms of communication has always been a factor in Lawrence Weiner's work. A quiet practitioner of mail art since the 1960s, Weiner followed that line of engagement to other forms. He created an online interactive environment in 1997 with ada web, showing how a Web site's space can be defined by linguistics rather than typical design features. Homeport was an early chat room that used meaning—text and graphics—to engage its players to ultimately end their engagement—with a crash. The work has been engaged in this kind of material up to the present. For example, Weiner's exhibition Au Point, at Marian Goodman Paris in 2005, explored chance transitions within space, using words like SCOOPED WITH and MIXED FOR and FOR A LACK OF to expose the paradox of the relations of simultaneous and parallel realities. The work, without specifying materials or quantities, floats as a realm within itself. The works of Lawrence Weiner seek to embody the complexity of simplicity, and are, in that succinct simplicity, cultural signposts of their time. This is why The Wolfsonian has chosen to make this presentation of (LO & BEHOLD) (MIRA & VE) available to the public. Lawrence Weiner will be the subject of a major retrospective in fall 2007 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, which will travel to the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in 2008. Selected past solo exhibitions include those held at the Hirshhorn Musem and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (1990); Dia Center for the Arts, New York (1991); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (1992); Philadelphia Museum of Art (1994); Museum Ludwig, Cologne (1995); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg and Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2000); Palacio Crystal, Reina Sofia, Madrid; and Birmingham Museum of Art, Alabama (2001); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2002); SAFN Museum, Reykjavik (2003); Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2004); Museum der Moderne Salzburg; Tate Gallery, London (2005); and Museo Contemporaneo Rivoli, Torino (2006). For further reading about Lawrence Weiner, see: Schwarz, Dieter, ed., Lawrence Weiner: Books 1968-1989 Catalogue Raisonné, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König, Köln & Le Nouveau Musée, Villeurbanne, 1989; Marí, Bartomeu & Zimmerman, Alice eds., Show & Tell: The Films & Videos of Lawrence Weiner, Imschoot, uitgevers, Ghent, 1992; Caldwell, John, This Is About Who We Are: The Collected Writings, San Francisco, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 1996; LAWRENCE WEINER, London: Phaidon Press, 1998; Birgit Pelzer, "Dissociated Objects: The Statements/Sculptures of Lawrence Weiner," October 1990, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, fall 1999; Fietzek, Gerti & Stemmrich, Gregor eds., Having Been Said, Writings & Interviews of Lawrence Weiner 1968-2003. Germany: Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit (ISBN 3-7757-9194-9), English edition, November 2004. The Wolfsonian commission is sponsored in part by Kate and Andy Spade. Museum to Turn Inside Out Thanks to Knight Foundation Support The Wolfsonian's initiative, The Art of Illumination: Illuminating the Arts, will utilize lighting systems and digital technology to display images ranging from large-scale reproductions of pieces in the museum's collection to commissioned contemporary works. The exterior displays will be presented in a variety of formats including images, video, film, static and moving text, and interactive mobile technology. The Wolfsonian began this project in 2005, working with New York-based Herves Descottes and L'Observatoire Internationale to develop the concept, but lacked funding to realize it until now. The large-scale digital images seen in the center of South Beach's historical district will have other ramifications as well. "The Wolfsonian's innovative project will not only elevate the museum's status as a civic landmark, but also enhance Miami Beach's international reputation as a center for art and design," says Dennis Scholl, Miami program director for the Knight Foundation. |
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