Part of my role at Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) is coordinating our public outreach, which encompasses publicity, tours, educational programming, and much more. A stimulating, and often fun, consequence of this aspect of my job is collaborating with my counterparts at other venues and institutions.

This collaboration takes many forms. Some of it is geographically based. Just this morning, in fact, I attended a meeting of the PR representatives of the arts organizations and other entities in the Grand Center district. We have been meeting regularly for at least six years now, an outgrowth of some ad hoc meetings among the galleries and museums of the district to plan a gallery walk. (That collaboration was in turn preceded by joint efforts surrounding the 2001 meeting of the American Association of Museums in St. Louis.) It was apparent that if Grand Center were to establish itself as the “Intersection of Art and Life” in St. Louis, we needed to pull together and coordinate our efforts  and pool our resources. It’s an ongoing effort to be sure, but with a number of notable successes.

Sometimes the collaboration is based on common interests. Taking a cue from the Grand Center model, several of the not-for-profit galleries and museums in St. Louis began meeting to discuss a challenge common to us all: how to promote awareness of, and draw visitors to, our venues, when it seemed like all of our accustomed media outlets were disappearing, and a bewildering array of alternative channels were taking their place. The blog you are reading now is a product of this collaboration, which came to be known as Saint Louis Art Map.

The visual arts community in St. Louis, like those in many other markets, has been affected by the seismic shifts in the media terrain over the past five or so years. The accustomed ecosystem, in which reviews not only stimulate public interest in an exhibition (and hopefully contribute to the public discourse about art), but also lend credibility to a venue and help attract artists and lenders–this ecosystem has been disrupted, and as happens in the natural world, the viability and adaptability of the art community are not entirely certain, yet are certainly not entirely without hope.

On the downside, the sole remaining major daily newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, no longer has a full-time visual arts critic, although it does still periodically publish exhibition previews and reviews. (This observation is not an indictment of the talented staff members from other disciplines and stringers who contribute these previews and reviews when they are given the opportunity. Indeed, MOCRA’s James Rosen exhibition was recently reviewed in the Post-Dispatch.) Notably, its weekend events supplement rarely includes mention of any but the biggest of blockbuster exhibitions.

The weekly Riverfront Times, which once allotted space for full-length reviews, now limits itself to “capsule” reviews which don’t allow for much more than a quick summary of what is on display. This is a shame, since reviewer Jessica Baran is a perceptive and eloquent critic.

On the upside, there are still quarters of the St. Louis media committed to in-depth consideration of the visual arts, including independent radio station KDHX-FM’s “Arts Interview” program; St. Louis Public Radio (KWMU-FM)’s weekly “Cityscape” program, and periodic features on PBS affiliate KETC’s “Living St. Louis.” The West End Word still publishes regular exhibition reviews.

We’ve also seen some new outlets and initiatives in recent years, some from institutions and others from grassroots origins. The online-only St. Louis Beacon posts regular visual art reviews from Ivy Cooper. Two collaborative ventures include the Saint Louis Art Map blog you are reading now, and the experiment (ever to be repeated?) of bringing in a visiting art critic to produce long-form reviews of several exhibitions at various venues, sponsored jointly by the Beacon, KETC, and KWMU. Boots Contemporary Art Space has given us five issues of the biannual Boot Print (here’s hoping that we’ll see more). Art St. Louis sponsors a blog that gives special attention to local and regional artists, while Art-Patrol St. Louis keeps current on exhibition openings and events.

While it’s an “older” format by social media standards, special mention must be made of the Critical Mass listserv, which has been going strong since February 2000. It’s an outgrowth of an earlier collaborative effort that produced a print gallery guide for several years. Beyond being a place to announce exhibitions and events, Critical Mass has seen some thoughtful, sometimes heated discussion about the state of the visual arts in the St. Louis region.

Other sources, while not focused exclusively on the visual arts, have been consistent in bringing attention to the gallery and museum scene. Where Magazine – St. Louis regularly highlights exhibitions in the area for the benefit of out-of-town visitors. Sauce Magazine makes room in each monthly issue to feature at least one or two current exhibitions, while St. Louis Magazine‘s Look/Listen blog keeps tabs on the visual arts. Culture Surfer has established a niche by presenting video content, including artist interviews. A number of arts calendar sites help get the word out about exhibition openings, notably the Regional Arts Commission’s Arts Zipper.

St. Louis has a toehold in the blogosphere* as well. There are institutional blogs, such as the shared blog of Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis and the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, Kemper Art Museum News, White Flag Projects blog, and MOCRA’s own blog. On the (all-too-neglected) Illinois side of the river, the Schmidt Art Center launched a blog this past March. There are a number of individual bloggers covering the St. Louis art scene as well.

This roll call is not an exhaustive survey of the current terrain–I haven’t even tried to explore the role of Facebook, Twitter, and other entrants in the field of social media. Feel free to mention additional resources in the comments section to this post.

At present, though, I find it encouraging that many people from varied points of origin on the visual arts spectrum are venturing into the void left by the Post-Dispatch and other media heavyweights. Institutions like those who established Saint Louis Art Map wonder what will emerge as the new “measuring sticks” of (professional) critical appraisal, and whether they will help to stabilize the arts ecosystem. At the same time, the atomization of arts criticism and discussion has opened the floor to previously unheard voices and given those voices much wider reach than they ever could have had previously. Hopefully that bodes well for renewed interest and engagement in, and moral and financial support for, the visual arts in the St. Louis region.

* The term “blogosphere” is credited to a much loved and much missed member of the St. Louis arts community, the late Brad Graham. It’s a shame his other suggestion, “blogmos,” didn’t catch on instead.

(This essay was adapted from a post previously published on the MOCRA blog.)

Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) recently opened an exhibition titled James Rosen: The Artist and the Capable Observer. Over his six-decade career, American artist James Rosen has produced a body of visually arresting paintings, watercolors, and drawings, that gently invite viewers to stay a while. Rosen seeks “capable observers” who bring to bear their own intellect and imagination in order to observe poetic images that are conducive to quiet contemplation. The late art historian Madlyn Millner Kahr wrote, “While others tangle themselves in excess, Rosen starts with the question: What is truly essential here? He demonstrates that the function of art is to coordinate the visual imagination, the sensitive eye, the intellect, and the network of subliminal associations that not the painter alone, but the observer as well, brings to the work.”

James Rosen, "S. Agata," 1986. Oil and wax/oil emulsion on canvas. Collection of MOCRA.

James Rosen has had a distinguished career as an artist and lecturer. Educated at Cooper Union, Wayne State University, and Cranbrook Academy of Art, he has taught at the University of Hawaii, the University of California – Berkeley, Augusta College, and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. He has exhibited widely and his works are in collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, the Whitney, and the Ashmolean Museum. He is represented by Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco, and the Leyton Gallery, St. John’s, Newfoundland.

The Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) is fortunate to have over 100 Rosen works either in its collection or on long-term loan. His work has been included in many of MOCRA’s group exhibitions over the years and never fails to draw appreciative comments from visitors. Drawing primarily on these works, The Artist and the Capable Observer presents work from the 1950s to the present, offering viewers the opportunity to observe Rosen’s visual journey through paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints.

James Rosen, "Trepassey: Triangles & Parallelograms," 2000. Watercolor and gouache on cardboard. Collection of MOCRA.

Influenced by artist Mark Rothko and art historian Meyer Schapiro, Rosen’s work demonstrates his keen understanding of art history, mastery of form, and ability to imbue canvases with mystery. The exhibition culminates with a series of oil/wax-oil emulsion paintings that are homages to the religious art of the European past. Rosen is especially drawn to some of the great European religious masterworks by artists such as Duccio and Grünewald. These works possess a sense of mystery as they slowly disclose themselves to the patient and attentive observer. He notes, “My paintings are about time. They have up to sixty veils of wax/oil and they have taken me sometimes a year to finish. They require time of the viewer as well … Only by spending time with the work, looking at it in subdued lighting, does one experience the work beginning to reveal itself to the viewer.”

Paintings by James Rosen installed in MOCRA's nave gallery. The large work at center is Rosen's "Homage to Guido da Siena: La Maestà."

Rosen’s works find an ideal complement at MOCRA, in a former chapel space. For instance, six paintings of saints, homages to works found in a neglected chapel in a convent in Ferrara, Italy, have been grouped together in one half of the nave gallery, flanking the monumental Homage to Guido da Siena: La Maestà. The effect is the creation of a meditative space that invites visitors to slow down and experience the subtle luminosity of Rosen’s work, to allow the work time to reveal itself. A generous placement of chairs reinforces this invitation.

The Artist and the Capable Observer continues through December 12, 2010. Regular museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Exhibition admission is free, though there is a suggested donation of $5, or $1 for students and children. Information about the exhibition is available by calling 314-977-7170 or visiting the MOCRA website.

Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) is currently presenting Good Friday: The Suffering Christ in Contemporary Art. This is an encore showing: Good Friday was originally presented in Spring 2009 as the second of two exhibitions celebrating MOCRA’s 15th anniversary. The exhibition includes works by over 30 artists of diverse backgrounds who have used the events of the day of Jesus’ death as inspiration for their own reflections on such themes as faith, suffering, loss, compassion, and unconditional love. The selected works are drawn from the MOCRA collection and works on long-term loan, and employ a wide range of media from painting and sculpture to fiber arts.

Sr. Helen David Brancato. "Crucifixion - Haiti," 1997. MOCRA collection.

It may come as a bit of a surprise—it did to me—that Good Friday was one of our best received exhibitions ever, given that the exhibition represented a bit of risk-taking on MOCRA’s part. We are committed to an interfaith exploration of how contemporary artists engage the religious and spiritual dimensions in their work. Although our track record of over 35 exhibitions demonstrates how ample our vision has been, it would be easy for people unfamiliar with us to dismiss a show with such an overtly Christian title as being sectarian. Quite to the contrary.

For instance, at least four works in Good Friday specifically treat the theme of “Pietà” (Mary holding her dead son after he is brought down from the cross). They include a large wooden cage, an abstract marble sculpture, and an homage to a famous 15th-century work, by artists from Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish backgrounds respectively, and a frenetic etching by Salvador Dalí. Taken together, these works represent a wide spectrum of understandings and interpretations of an age-old theme.

Furthermore, we experimented with ways of inviting people to approach the work from a standpoint of contemplation, or even prayer. Is it  appropriate to encourage this sort of thing in a museum? This was a topic taken up in the MOCRA conference “Art and the Religious Imagination” in March 2009. Dr. Gerald Bolas, former Director of the Ackland Art Museum at UNC-Chapel Hill, discussed the challenges and sensitivities for a state university art museum in displaying art and artifacts associated with a particular religious tradition, but also the opportunities for community engagement. The role of various sorts of museums as stewards and interpreters of sacred materials is also explored in the book Stewards of the Sacred, edited by Lawrence E. Sullivan and Alison Edwards.

The situation at MOCRA is a little different. First, we are a museum at a private Catholic university, and an interfaith outlook is built into our mission statement. Furthermore, Good Friday does not include liturgical objects or objects tied to particular communities. Still, how do we help people feel welcome to seek a faith experience, without putting any undue pressure on those who simply want to look at the art? One response was through a booklet of meditations on the art of Good Friday which is offered to visitors for self-guided reflection. Another was the development of group visits, facilitated by MOCRA staff, which incorporate discussion of the art from a spiritual or faith perspective as well as an art appreciation perspective.

I’ve discussed both of these approaches in posts on the MOCRA blog (here and here). In one of those posts I raised some questions, which I have refined a bit since then:

• Does the idea of approaching art this way leave you feeling ambivalent, or even opposed?
• Could (or should) something like this take place in a “public” art museum? Why or why not?
• Do MOCRA’s particular mission and setting on a private Catholic university campus give us latitude to do things other institutions can’t safely attempt?
• Good Friday has a clearly Christian point of departure, and the groups I described were coming from a standpoint of Christian faith. Is this sort of exhibition and approach to art transferable to art from other faith traditions?

We invite you to visit MOCRA and the Good Friday exhibition, and consider these questions for yourself.

Good Friday: The Suffering Christ in Contemporary Art continues through April 25. On March 28, MOCRA Director Terrence E. Dempsey gives a lecture titled “The Wounded Body of Christ and the Modern Social Conscience.” The lecture is free and open to the public. Find more information by clicking here.

December 1, 2009 marks the 20th anniversary of Day With(out) Art (DWA). Over those twenty years, this annual day of mourning and action has metamorphosed from emphasizing loss (signaled by removing artworks or draping them, or dimming the lights in galleries) to encouraging the creative energy and insight that art can bring to a devastating and demoralizing situation. As the Visual AIDS website notes:

… Day With(out) Art has grown into a collaborative project in which an estimated 8,000 national and international museums, galleries, art centers, AIDS Service Organizations, libraries, high schools and colleges take part.

Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) has participated in DWA regularly since 1994. In addition to highlighting particular works of art, three times we have hosted and helped organize observances involving members of the wider arts community.

Adrian Kellard, "The Promise," 1989. Courtesy of the Estate of Adrian Kellard.

This year, MOCRA observes DWA by exhibiting The Promise, by the late Adrian Kellard, a rising artist in 1980s New York. His large-scale carved wood block panels evoke both medieval shrines and the woodblock prints of 20th-century German Expressionists, but their bright colors and folk-art quality make them accessible to a wide range of audiences. The Promise riffs on images of St. Christopher, a legendary giant who unwittingly carried the Christ child across a river. The image expresses endurance and perseverance in the midst of suffering. Its enigmatic text, “I will never leave you,” seems to assert love, hope, compassion, and loyalty. It is an especially poignant message when we consider that Kellard’s own life was cut short by AIDS. He died in the fall of 1991 at the age of 32.

The Promise was included in the 1992-93 international traveling exhibition From Media to Metaphor: Art about AIDS, and in the 1994 exhibition Art’s Lament: Creativity in the Face of Death (organized by the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

MOCRA is pleased to be able to share The Promise with St. Louis audiences for this year’s Day With(out) Art. MOCRA will have the work on display beginning Tuesday, December 1 through December 13. Find more information here.

MOCRA’s current exhibition, Michael Byron: Cosmic Tears, also continues through December 13. Although not directly connected to HIV/AIDS, this exhibition does engage the ambiguity of suffering and the challenge it poses to us as a fact of our human existence. I suspect that Byron’s works speak to many of our visitors of the ways in which we can creatively elicit meaning out of all of life’s experiences, both the joys and the tears.

In whatever fashion makes sense to you, we hope you will join MOCRA in observing World AIDS Day and Day With(out) Art.

Cosmic Tears, an exhibition of paintings by internationally recognized artist Michael Byron, opens at Saint Louis University’s Museum of Contemporary Religious Art (MOCRA) on Sunday, September 13, 2009 with a free public reception from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. The exhibition continues through December 13, 2009. (Unfortunately, Mr. Byron cannot attend the opening, but he will be giving a talk about his work on Sunday, November 15, 2009, at 2:00 p.m., followed by a reception).

Michael Byron, Cosmic Tears 12, 2003.

The earliest work in the Cosmic Tears series dates from 2003. While works from the series have been shown in other exhibitions, this is the first time they have been displayed as a body of work. In these evocative paintings, Mr. Byron explores the relationship of the individual to the universal. The works are based on a text by the artist that meditates on the inevitable mix of emotions that accompanies the act of creation; pain and joy together elicit a “cosmic tear” that is the “womb of our psyche.” Yet the paintings themselves attest to the potential of art to “shape that tear into Meaning.” The abstract works simultaneously suggest both microcosmic and macrocosmic perspectives, and evince a quiet, reflective quality.

Mr. Byron is Professor of Painting at the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. In his distinguished career he has exhibited throughout the United States, as well as the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, France, Germany, Spain, and Mexico. He was selected for the 1989 Whitney Biennial. His work is included in many public collections including the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum Boymans-van Beuningen (Rotterdam), and the Tamayo Museum (Mexico City).

MOCRA thanks the artist and Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, for their assistance in assembling this exhibition.

Regular museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Exhibition admission is free, though there is a suggested donation of $5, or $1 for students and children. More information is available by calling 314-977-7170 or visiting MOCRA’s website.

One of the most frequently asked (and unasked) questions visitors to the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art have is, “What makes this religious art?” Others are, “What’s the difference between religious and spiritual?” and, “Can’t anything be spiritual for someone?”

MOCRA has spent the past fifteen years exploring these questions, not with theoretical conjectures, but by way of concrete example. From Australian Aboriginal art and Alvin Ailey to contemporary Chinese and Latin American photography, from the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and contemporary illuminated manuscripts to Andy Warhol’s “Silver Clouds” – with each new exhibition we consider another way in which contemporary artists are in dialogue with the spiritual dimensions of life, using the full vocabulary of contemporary artistic production.

Now we invite you to a free public conference that will explore some of these questions. “Art and the Religious Imagination” will feature a panel of distinguished museum directors and theologians discussing the roles that secular and religious art museums can play in the presentation of art with spiritual and religious content. A panel discussion and audience Q/A will follow the individual presentations, so if you have an interest in this topic – or even if you’re skeptical about the whole idea of contemporary religious art – please come and add your voice.

The talk takes place in Xavier Hall Theatre on the SLU campus, and we’ll have a brief reception afterward next door at MOCRA, so you’ll have a chance to see our current exhibition, “Good Friday.” You can find a list of the panelists and the titles of their talks on MOCRA’s website. Please join us on Sunday, March 29, from 1:30 to 4:00 p.m. and add your voice to the proceedings.