Enjoying St. Louis Visual Arts Over the Holidays

The holiday break can be a great time to get out and explore the visual arts in town with family and friends. See below for a list of what you can expect to find at the Saint Louis Art Map institutions…

Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts
(open regular hours)
Current exhibition: Urban Alchemy/Gordon Matta-Clark

Laumeier Sculpture Park
(The offices, indoor galleries, and shop will be closed Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day. The park grounds will remain open from 8 am to sunset on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Day but will be closed on Christmas Day.)
Current exhibition: Roberley Bell: Inside Out

Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum
(open from 11-3 on Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve and closed Christmas Day and New Year’s Day; otherwise open regular hours)
Current exhibitions: Chance Aesthetics, Metabolic City, and A Challenge to Democracy

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis
(closed on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day; otherwise open regular hours)
Current exhibition: For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there

Sheldon Art Galleries
(closed Christmas Eve and Christmas Day as well as New Years Eve and New Years Day; otherwise open regular hours)
Current exhibitions: The Language of Objects, Legends of St. Louis Blues Music, William Christenberry, Backpack Blues, and Jessika Miekeley

White Flag Projects
White Flag will be closed during the holidays and will open the Love and Theft exhibition on January 9, 2010.

MOCRA
MOCRA is closed to the public from until February 2, when we reopen with a re-presentation of our “Good Friday” exhibition.

Boots
Boots will be closed during the holidays and will open in early February with our international artist in resident exhibition-Wilhelm Neußer.

• Art Organization: Kimberly Singer, Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

Kemper Art Museum summer exhibitions CLOSE Monday, July 27

Make plans to stop by the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum before Monday, July 27 so you don’t miss the summer 2009 exhibitions. In Rirkrit Tiravanija: Chew the Fat, the artist films conversations with twelve international artists of his generation who rose to prominence in the 1990s. This resulting video installation, originally produced for the Guggenheim’s exhibition theanyspacewhatever (October 24, 2008 January 7, 2009), captures each artist in an intimate setting, resulting in a series of fascinating and intimate portraits. The interviews are displayed on multiple monitors installed throughout the gallery, which is transformed into a laid-back viewing lounge. The featured artists include Angela Bulloch, Maurizio Cattelan, Liam Gillick, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Douglas Gordon, Carsten Höller, Pierre Huyghe, Jorge Pardo, Philippe Parreno, Elizabeth Peyton, Tobias Rehberger, and Andrea Zittel.

Read the St. Louis Post-Dispatch review >>

Watch the trailer:

In addition, see the 2009 MFA Thesis Exhibition, featuring the work of twenty-seven master of fine arts candidates in Washington University’s Graduate School of Art, part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. And don’t forget to head upstairs to check out the Museum’s recently-reinstalled Portraiture section of the permanent collection gallery.

• Student Review: Ariel Greene, Washington University

“Photography on the Street”

Currently on view at the Saint Louis  Art Museum, Photography on the Street, showcases a selection of ten works on paper. These prints are displayed on the second floor of the museum in a small gallery where visitors are invited to view the exhibition and surrounding exhibits at their leisure. The selection dates from the 1930s through the 1970s tracks the development and use of smaller, portable cameras—the combination of smaller cameras and faster film allowed artists greater freedom in the medium, enabling them to capture fleeting scenes of urban life. The photos are primarily black and white with the exception of two color prints from the 1960s and 70s. The variety of subject matter ranges from the hardships of post-war depression to the glamour of celebrity culture. Ironically, what these photos have in common is that they portray the isolation and ambiguity that befalls individuals in the midst of city life.

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• Art Organization: Annie Sarachan, Washington University

Staging Old Masters: Former Prisoners Perform at the Pulitzer

Former prisoners became actors and art historians in front of the masterworks currently on display at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in their exhibition, Ideal (Dis)Placement: Old Masters at the Pulitzer.  In preparation for an ongoing succession of shows, the performers took a six-week class led by Prison Performing Arts director Agnes Wilcox.  After writing about their impressions of the art pieces, their own words were made into a series of dramas they acted out in front of the pieces.  The result was a captivating, participatory production that showcased humorous routines of personal histories bravely intertwined with modern day interpretations of the paintings.

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• Student Review: Jenna Stempel, Washington University

Lecture: “Collaborative Aesthetics”

When attending an artist’s lecture, it is perfectly reasonable to expect the artist not to give free hugs. Fortunately, nobody told Brett Cook about traditional lecture dynamics. Wednesday, March 18th, in his lecture entitled
“Collaborative Aesthetics: a Dialogue about Community and Soul” at Washington University, Cook hugged every participant who offered their definitions of “community” and “soul.”

The rest of the lecture was much of the same. After beginning with a breathing exercise in order to better assess the artwork, Brett Cook exhibited photos of traditional portraiture in the faculty club at Harvard University and a cow sculpture painted with Mondrian geometry in a West Indian neighborhood. He displayed artwork that he views as inaccessible to the public and irrelevant to the community. In contrast, Cook presented his own portfolio, which was increasing representative of the spaces in which each piece was displayed.

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• Student Review: Christy Nigh, Washington University

Fred Tomaselli Speaks

In honor of the re-dedication celebration of Steinberg Hall on Washington University’s campus, Fred Tomaselli gave a lecture about his life and work. Tomaselli had been asked to speak by his gallery owner James Cohan, an alumnus of Washington University.

Tomaselli began in school by studying painting, but felt that the pressure of its art historical lineage was more than he could live up to.  As a result, he spent several years exploring sculptural forms.  Several of his works became interactive pieces requiring the viewer to be an active participant in the work.  For example, in his piece, “Box for Your Head”, the viewer is required to insert their head into a hole, covered by the neck of a T-shirt, in a wooden box that is hung on the wall.  The viewer is rewarded for this action by a view of an alternate reality, outer space.

His talk framed his work within the context of his life-long experience and interests.

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• Student Review: Casey O'Brien, Washington University

Designs for the Riverfront

As a resident of St. Louis, it goes without saying that if you drive downtown, you will see various angles of the Arch along the way. It stands as a tribute to the Louisiana Purchase among other historical events, and is an easily recognizable icon of Missouri at the very least. As a student tour guide at Washington University, I often point out the nearby Arch, which you can see on campus if you’re lucky (and it’s winter). It was all I knew about St. Louis for a long while – that the city was home to the “Gateway to the West.”

In late January, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum opened a new exhibit on Eero Saarinen, the architect who designed the Arch, and invited the public to join in a free symposium held at Washington University’s Steinberg Auditorium. The Symposium was hosted by Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts and sponsored by ASSA ABLOY. I dropped by for one of the last portions of the day-long discussions, arriving in time to hear Patricia Heyda, a visiting assistant professor of architecture at Washington University, speak about the “Riverfront Charrette.” The “Charrette” took place last November, with students gathering from Midwestern schools to re-design the Riverfront property (theoretically) here in St. Louis.

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• Student Review: Sam Clapp, Washington University

A Reaction to “private (dis)play”

Walking with a group of friends to see the opening of the new exhibition at the Center of Creative Arts (COCA), private (dis)play, I had no idea what to expect.  The concept sounded novel: exhibit pages from artists’ notebooks to gain an understanding of their inner lives, but I wondered how such an idea might be implemented effectively. After all, I thought as I jumped over the puddles of slush covering the unlit streets of University City, notebook pages alone are not very interesting.

As we entered the building and made our way to the exhibition room, I thought my worst fears were confirmed. The show was housed in a white exhibition space, and the nature of the art being shown made for a fairly drab appearance. Reluctantly I began to circle my way around the space, glancing at the notebooks and sheets of paper pinned and encased in plastic along the walls. Though the exhibit emphasized the sketchbook component of private work, the pieces took many forms. In addition to white sketchbook pages, the show housed larger sheets of paper with drawings done in pen, video monitors displaying digital animatics, lined sheets with watercolor, and even a few collages.

After I had perused through the gallery for a few minutes one of the curators, Jamie Adams, began to speak.

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• Student Review: Elaine Chow, Washington University

Eero Saarinen - Opening Lecture

Run a Google search on “top skylines of the world” and you’ll be hard-pressed to find St. Louis anywhere on the list. Although St. Louis’ skyline isn’t much to brag about, one aspect we have that sets us apart from most other concrete jungles of America is the Saint Louis Gateway Arch, a 630 ft. tall steel structure built in the 1960s, and designed by Finnish-American architect, Eero Saarinen.

I had the opportunity to attend the opening lecture for a two-month long exhibition at Washington University in St. Louis in honor of Eero Saarinen and the Arch.

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• Student Review: Marietta Alessi, Washington University

Get to Know Yuko

Yuko Shimizu is a Japanese born, New York illustrator who gave an entertaining and educational lecture in the Steinberg Auditorium at Washington University late Wednesday, February 18th. An illustrator with a love for saturated tones, texture, and dramatic figures, Yuko’s art has a complexity that is very intriguing. She once painted a ceramic rabbit with an intricate black and white pattern comprised of just dots. The bunny sold on Ebay for over a thousands dollars and the proceeds went to Save the Children Foundation. Other artworks she has done include: an evocative illustration for a sex story in New York Magazine where hundreds of couples were making love in the middle of a colorful Times Square, a chic aristocratic female lounging in ornate outfits for a Neiman Marcus advertisement, and an offbeat summer illustration of a wave rendered in a cable knit sweater pattern engulfing a swimmer as balls of yarn are tossed around for a Superphat magazine cover. Although her finished work  looks so polished, Yuko’s career path is almost as complicated as the patterns she creates.

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