Busy October of the NC Museum of Art

It's often been observed that the Modern Art Museum has serves a number of functions. We're not only a haven for the art elite, we're a repository for works of art, we're classroom, we're part theater, we're certainly an educational institution. Edgar Pito's Boweron, director of the North Carolina Museum of Art. I'm Famicidal Henderson. The State Art Museum has a lot going on. We parallel what some of the more strictly defined educational institutions do. And we try and ever to lose sight of the fact that our principal purpose is to bring the spectator and works of art together in a meaningful context. And I think as long as we put works of art first and that everything else generally falls into place. This week alone, for example, we had Peter Plagans, the former chairman of the art department at University of North Carolina, was lecturing and we had nearly a full attendance in the auditorium of 250.

We find that our goal is to have 500 to 600, 750 people a week coming just to educational events, perhaps a thousand, that includes weekends, films, concerts, lectures. It's all very important and we feel that we must make an unremitting effort to continue to offer high quality programs if we do so people will come. The North Carolina Museum of Art is well known for its collection of European and Old Masters paintings. Right now, the museum is featuring an exhibit of modern art online from the Whitney Museum. Mitchell Khan, curator of American and contemporary art, highlights this exhibit. This is a survey of American painting and sculpture since 1970. And what's exciting about the exhibition is that it shows a tremendous variety of approaches to contemporary art and I think that for every visitor there will be something that excites them. How far is contemporary art, just what years are we talking about here?

This exhibition begins in 1970 and includes work done last year in 1983. So it's almost up to the minute. Are there any pieces in that particular that everybody has to see or things that you find will be very illustrative of what was going on? I think two of the key works for what's happening right now are paintings by David Sally and Julian Schnabel, these are two of the people who are often called the bad boys of contemporary art. They are represented by paintings which use the human figure in what some people may find disturbing ways and they point to the resurgence of painting the human figure that has happened in the 1980s and the early 1970s the exhibition reveals that so many artists had moved toward abstraction and toward sculpture and other forms of art making.

Although this exhibition focuses on painting and sculpture I think it's important to remember that in the early 1970s many people thought that painting was dead, that video and photography and film and live performance art and outdoor and environmental installations were going to replace painting and what we see in this exhibition is that painting has made a resurgence in the 1980s much to everyone's surprise. A lot of people might go away with the impression that they really weren't searching in the 70s with what to do with themselves there seemed to be such a wide range and simulating unrelated in what they were doing and how they were doing it. In a way the exhibition could be a bit confusing for some people because there are 45 works in the show and it is very much like looking at 45 different viewpoints meeting 45 different people each of whom has their own sort of banner to carry but I think what we find linking

the works of art is a move away from stressing the materials of art and the visual properties of art, you know surface texture, color, things like that to a kind of art where meaning is most important, personal meaning, spiritual meaning, social or political meanings, that's the trend that we see happening from the early 1970s to the 1980s and of course that can be done in many different ways. One piece that I found very striking was this black and white grid picture which it turns out to me the painter didn't even paint, well now that's your strike, so this is a little different there. I think that's a perfect example of what was happening in art around 1970, this work I saw the width that you mentioned, comes was bought by the Whitney Museum as a piece

of paper with instructions on it, that is what the Whitney Museum bought when they acquired that work and the instructions tell us how to draw the work with white claypa on a black painted wall and that quality of anonymity you might call it that anyone can make the work of art, but the idea is what's important and the idea is what comes from the artist. That is very different from today when we look at so much art today and there is really once again an emphasis on the personal touch of the artist's hand and that as paint as a conveyor of feeling like we can sense that the artist was right there and attacked that canvas, but 15 years ago that was not important to artists, they wanted many artists wanted art to seem much more neutral and anonymous, almost industrially fabricated perhaps. There are some sculptures included in one that particularly stands my mind is this poor

sculptor who seems to be killing himself in some way. That sculpture that you refer to is called Me and the Butcher Knives, it is a self portrait of James Surles who was here about a year and a half ago and he spoke at the opening of the museum to a group of artists. Surles made a stylized self portrait out of I think Cypress and Mahogany and it really looks more like some vision out of the Bible than a real self portrait. He used materials which remind you of folk art, folk carvers and he created this elongated body with Butcher Knives stuck all through it and I think it is a vision not really something about oh I'm suffering but a vision about sort of death and transcendence and something nightmareish and spooky rather than real. There could be a feeling of in the beginning at least of the search of this being lost but

we see at the end that it is coming back to human figures and things that are more normal even if they are approached in rather a different way. Can we take any reassurance from that? Reassurance. Well I think that when looking at a lot of contemporary art what is reassuring is that the artists are concerned about the condition of contemporary man but there is no way that we can say their vision is an optimistic one or a positive one and I think that is only natural from the world we live in. Many artists are once again highly politically motivated. They are very concerned about the threat of nuclear war and of more limited wars taking place all over the world in equities and both democratic and non-democratic societies and I think we see a sort of a sense of lamentation in this art.

Many of the figures that we see are twisted or agonized in some way it is a view of the human condition that makes one pause. Most of the museums exhibits examines the state of today's world but with a lighter touch than some use. Well a lot of artists have injected a wonderful note of humor into their explorations of the world going awry and this small exhibition of work by Roger Brown which is on a different floor from the Whitney exhibition shows all kinds of natural occurrences that might upset one under normal conditions but his way of painting makes them in a way quite humorous. I think it is interesting to note that one doesn't have to be entirely negative when dealing with serious issues that laughter is an important element in a number of the works

in the Whitney exhibition and especially in Roger Brown's work. We recently acquired a painting by Roger Brown which shows the founding fathers of this country and the reason we put together the little show of his work is so that people could see more of his work and get an in depth knowledge of what he is about. Well we've talked a bit about the two exhibitions but I'm sure that there are a number of other activities available. There are a number of activities available and I think you have a film series against a contemporary treatment of current themes. Yes what we have is not exactly conventional film. The term independent film has been used over the past 20 some years to describe filmmakers and artists who make films for more personal reasons and films that are not commercially distributed and in North Carolina there is very very limited outlet for this kind of film

so we are very excited that we can present them. These are being shown every Saturday at 11 o'clock a.m. in auditorium and they are free and the films run through November 10th except I think there is no program October 27th and I especially encourage people to see October 13th presentation of America is waiting by Bruce Conner who I feel is one of the most important artists and filmmakers alive at this time. Are they similar in any way or do they all have different techniques and approaches? The films have very different techniques and approaches and there are more than one film shown each Saturday. Each Saturday's selections try to group films by affinity so for example this past Saturday we showed two films that dealt with the current political situation.

Other Saturday's will show films that deal more with humor and fantasy or that deal more with manipulating imagery from existing media so there is quite a variety. Who decides on which exhibitions and which films and all these different kinds of things that will be brought to the museum? The films were selected by John Hanhart who is curator of film and video at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and he has been I think instrumental in encouraging and presenting independent film and video and is really one of the experts in the field if not the finest. The exhibition that we have here was selected by another curator at the Whitney Museum Richard Marshall and the reason that we decided that we wanted it here was because North

Carolina has not really had an opportunity to see the major figures who are sort of altering and forming contemporary taste although there are a number of spaces in North Carolina that show contemporary art this large kind of survey has not been done to my knowledge in recent years it's the first time we're able to see work by Susan Rothenberg or Julian Schnabel or David Sally in person and these are people who are in every issue of the art magazines and vanity fair and art news when you open them up so we thought it was an important opportunity not to miss. This museum is the best known for the old masters and that collection is there much likelihood they will try to very aggressively go into contemporary art.

Well I think we have been aggressively showing contemporary art since we opened we have two smaller exhibition spaces in the museum for temporary shows one is devoted to North Carolina art and another is devoted to contemporary art from around the world the Roger Brown exhibition that we discussed is in the contemporary art gallery and right now in the North Carolina gallery we have worked by John Menopace photographer who lives in Chapel Hill and when people come to the museum these two galleries generally have worked by living artists once in a while the North Carolina gallery will have worked by older more historical art and older artists who are no longer living but generally these two galleries always have the work of living artists. Well there certainly are a lot of different approaches and a lot of things to show from the art world here how people know what's going on and what's available.

Well there is a free handout that is available at the entrance to the exhibition in which I have written a text which I hope will explain and some of the works of art in this show there is also a larger catalog for purchase in the museum shop and there is an addition electric series in the evenings on Tuesday evenings in October and there is a charge for this lecture series which addresses issues in contemporary art and architecture. Another exhibit at the museum right now is called the Lightestetic and examines light and its use in art a day long symposium on the topic will be held at the museum on October 27th. Nancy Kitchiff, coordinator of adult programs explains the purpose of the exhibit. There is an educational exhibition that focuses on light as an element in painting sculpture, architecture and photography I suppose.

And what we try to do is isolate that one element and show three different ways that artists can use it so that people are a little more analytical when they go into the rest of the galleries and look at things and we divide it light into three different categories in a way rather arbitrarily because artists actually use light in all three ways simultaneously but it makes it easier to sort things out that way. So we have literal light which is when light is actually a part of the work of art either using the sun as you can see in Nancy Holt's fabrications and installation that we photograph up or using neon as in Jerry nose work or even in something like an impressionist canvas when sunlight is in fact the theme of the work. The second category is spiritual and emotional light when light is used to convey a certain evocative sensation in the work.

So we have a renaissance panel painting with a gold background and a gold reflects light and it's a means to show that it's a religious painting like halos are gold you know it's from that kind of idea. Also we have light in two landscapes one by danger field is kind of a bombastic 19th century look at the grand canyon kind of painting. And it uses light as a device to make it seem more emotional to make a jazz ear and really commanding and then it's compared to a Blake lock it was a contemporary of danger fields which is a much more meditative work and really you kind of stand in contemplate nature and it's a moonlit scene so you see that different kind of light. And thirdly is objective light or descriptive light where light is used to actually create the sense of three dimensions on the two dimensional surface of the canvas or light and architecture

is used to define volume in a building and we have a model really excellent model of Frank Lloyd Wright's row behalf that shows that very clearly. But again we divided light up in those three ways and what you see is actually you know the danger field let's say we use light objectively and emotionally or something we use it literally and emotionally but we thought that by making people really kind of look at the light and think about it in that way that they'll be able to sort out those elements and paintings a little more readily than they might be otherwise. Keshe explains the theme of life or an exhibition grew out of an earlier exhibit showing the elements of art that exhibit focused on color light dark contrast and texture they decided to focus on one component for an expanded exhibit. Light is in many ways the most complex element I think that an artist deals with it let us go beyond just painting and deal with sculpture and architecture as well which we thought

was important and also light dark contrast turns out to be something that people with visual impairments if they have partial science chances are they can perceive light dark contrast and so in keeping with the galleries aimed to be sympathetic to people with visual impairment that ended up being the most logical kind of thing we could deal with. Most of the things in the exhibition are from the collection or in some cases were specially fabricated for the exhibition to illustrate a particular point clearly when you're dealing with a permanent collection we were limited to things that were not already on view elsewhere in the museum. Lorraine Lazle, Coordinator of Statewide Services, points out there are some predetermined factors affecting what works go into an exhibit. We did want to pick things that were of the best exhibition quality that we could that

were it on view and the curators helped us a great deal in looking at the things that were in storage and being sympathetic to the intent of the exhibition and helping direct us to particular works of art that they felt suited the purpose and that they were also interested in having an exhibition. I think that any time you attempt to isolate a particular element it is difficult and as Nancy said it is somewhat arbitrary. Those works of art in the exhibition have a great deal of other things going on besides just the use of light but I think that by focusing on a specific element and making people think about that particular thing when they're looking at a work of art it does help them

when they go and look at the rest of this museum or other museums. When you see paintings of the Madonna or the Nativity you're probably looking at gold ground panel painting. It was a technique used by artists in Italy hundreds of years ago. There was an example of how that was achieved in this exhibition. The technique is a great deal more complicated I think than people realize. They also are not aware that when the paintings were made the gold ground was in fact quite brilliant and over the centuries that has usually become somewhat dull and you're much more struck with how brilliantly these paintings must have glowed in fact when they were originally made and you're much more aware of the spiritual impact that they must have had. There are a couple of pieces of sculpture included in this and a lot of us don't think

of light and sculpture you know that's what it doesn't go together. Is that a common oversight among people? I guess so in many ways I think it's one of the more obvious ways that light interacts with the work of art because it literally does define it and play off the planes of the work of art and describe the volume of the work of art so that in its true sense light in that case is descriptive it literally illuminates that object for the viewer. This exhibition will be up until next summer, students, adults, families all own courage to come. There is a high contrast brochure for the visually impaired. The panels in the exhibit are in a readable print for the visually impaired and cited as well. Another brochure outlines services for those with special needs, wheelchair accessibility, taped to programs for the hearing impaired and such.

The museum makes itself accessible to special populations. Joseph Covington, Director of Education, elaborates. When the light aesthetic was being planned our first goal was to teach some basic ideas about light but after deciding on that then we asked ourselves how can we best do that and to what audience, how can we make the audience for this exhibition as large as possible. And the answer to that was, in part, to design the exhibition so that people with special needs can get something out of it. The visually impaired, the hearing impaired is Nancy mentioned with the different equipment that we have for them. We're also doing a lot of other things for the visually impaired. The Mary Duke Middle Gallery is sort of the centerpiece of our set of programs for the visually impaired but we also offer a hands-on workshop in our studio classroom that's available for any visually impaired group all they have to do is call and schedule it.

And in that workshop what we do is we take mostly small objects out of the vault and put them on a table and we talk about why they're interesting, why they're important and would let the people touch them and handle them and get an idea of the size and scale, the materials, the texture, that sort of thing. They can do that and that's probably the way that they get the most direct involvement with the work of art that's possible in the museum. There's another program we do that we're very enthusiastic about and that is a touch tour strictly for the visually impaired in the regular galleries of the museum. And this is sort of the element that makes the whole package of programs complete for that audience. We've chosen with the help of the curators and the conservators a group of sculptures that are relatively durable and are not in danger of being damaged by being touched. And we take the visually impaired visitors through all of the permanent galleries in the

museum and introduce them to major works of art that are the same ones that you and I come to the museum to see. Things that go back several thousand years to ancient Egypt, one of the favorite Egyptian pieces we have is a granite bust of the lion-headed goddess Sekhmet and they can even with wearing protective surgical gloves, they can feel the whiskers of Sekhmet, the lion goddess. According to notes, all these programs for the visually impaired create a package that can be matched by only a few fine arts museums in the country. Most still don't want their artworks touched. The museum also offers services to the hearing impaired. Yes, we have a modern miracle called the induction loop which actually is very simple. All we do is turn it on and anyone who has a hearing aid with a telephone switch simply flips their own hearing aid to the telephone switch and they can hear whatever the speaker is saying through the microphone, through their own personal hearing aid.

A lot of times people are reluctant to borrow different listening devices because either they just don't want to ask for it, they don't want to be any bother or they're perhaps not comfortable wearing something that's conspicuous. But when they can use their own hearing aid, nobody knows that they're using it. It's very convenient and it works very well for people who have some hearing capacity. How much of a population is there out there that needs these special services that are available? Well, that's one thing that has taken some getting used to in a lot of museums. Sometimes a museum will get an idea that they want to do a program for a special group, a group of special needs and they put a lot of time and care into it and they do it and then the people who take advantage of it are small and number. But really you have to expect that.

We do this because we want to do it because we think it's, it doesn't, in broad our audience. But we're not going to have hundreds and hundreds of people coming to use either the listening devices or taking advantage of our touch tours and things like that. It's a very small percentage of the population. It's an important group, important groups, but the numbers are not that large. From those people who have come and experienced some of the things that you offer to them, is it really a whole new way of, I don't know, seeing is quite the right word but of conceptualizing things? There's a new way of seeing yes and that's the way the visually impaired refer to it. They come because they want to see things even if they can't see. We help them to do that in whatever way they can. For people who use the induction loop, this is such a new idea that actually very few people have used it yet but the people who have used it say that it's a new world for them. We're not the first institution in the city to use this.

There are a couple of others, I think, in the city hall chamber. There is an induction loop, also the Wake County libraries have one that's portable that they lend out and we borrowed that one before we had our permanent one installed. But it is an idea that people have to get used to gradually. A lot of people still don't know about it. The people who use it can't hear a great deal that ordinarily they wouldn't hear. The State Art Museum can present new and different worlds to all of us, Director Peter Baueron. We feel very strongly that another of our missions is to attract the public here because it doesn't help very much to take out, to develop these programs if no one comes. So we've orchestrated this very well and there are a number of, I think, very encouraging signs that at last, or I should say now that we are 18 months into the opening of this

building, that the museum and its programs are becoming a force in the intellectual and social or a feature of the intellectual and social life of this greater metropolitan area. Baueron approximates 325,000 visitors have been to the museum since it opened at its new location. Museum staffers want you there and go to Great Lengths to point out it is yours to discover. I'm Famigil Henderson for WUNC.