UMMA: Exhibitions and events for February 2020
Continuing Exhibitions
JANUARY 25– MAY 17, 2020
A. ALFRED TAUBMAN GALLERY I
This expansive look at the work and concerns of emerging contemporary artist Cullen Washington, Jr. pivots around the artist’s most recent series, Agoras . The compositions explore the ancient Greek public space as a site for activated assembly and the heart of the artistic, spiritual, and political life of the city. UMMA’s installation is designed with an actual public square at its center, complete with sound components featuring noted political and aesthetic discourse and surrounded by Washington’s soaring monumental collages. Works from four earlier series by the artist form the perimeter of the Museum’s largest special exhibition space. The artist describes his work as “abstract meditations on the grid and humanity.”
Lead support for this exhibition is provided by Erica Gervais Pappendick and Ted Pappendick, Candy and Michael Barasch, the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, Michigan Medicine, the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, and the Institute for the Humanities. Additional generous support is provided by the University of Michigan Department of History of Art, School of Education, School of Social Work, and Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.
THROUGH MAY 10, 2020
ELEANOR NOYES CRUMPACKER GALLERY
UMMA’s second exhibition of Inuit art derived from the Power Family’s generous promised gift to the Museum in 2018 explores the relationship between the artist and the representation of everyday experiences. Through a selection of mid-century to contemporary Inuit prints, drawings, and sculptures that portray seemingly ordinary reflections of daily life along with daydreaming meditations, the exhibition bridges the mundane and the fantastic. Together, these artworks present a distinct imagery and a visual poetry culled from the day-to-day reality of life in the far polar north. The perspectives range from soaring gazes at the horizon to glimpses of commonplace social interactions. These contemplations reveal intimate connections among the artists, their communities, and their locale—a specific place and time composed of icy regions and vast seas and tundras. Reflections: An Ordinary Day takes visitors on a lyrical journey of the myriad spaces and routines within an Arctic landscape.
This exhibition is made possible by the Power Family Program for Inuit Art, established in 2018 through the generosity of Philip and Kathy Power.
THROUGH FALL 2021
VERTICAL GALLERY
In Pan-African Pulp, Botswana-born artist Meleko Mokgosi explores the history of Pan-Africanism, the global movement to unite ethnic groups of sub-Saharan African descent. His Vertical Gallery installation, which inaugurates a new biennial commission program at UMMA, features large-scale panels inspired by African photo novels of the 1960s and ’70s, a mural examining the complexity of blackness, posters from Pan-African movements from around the world, including those founded in Detroit and Africa in the 1960s, and stories from Setswana literature. Pan-African Pulp vividly connects to Detroit’s deep history of activism, where organizations such as Black Nation of Islam, The Republic of New Afrika, Shrine of the Black Madonna (Black Christian Nationalism), Pan-African Congress, and United Negro Improvement Association were founded. The renewed urgency for diversity and civil rights in Detroit, and the country as a whole, heightens the relevance of Mokgosi’s project and reveals the deep connections between these historical movements and those developing today.
Lead support is provided by Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch. Additional generous support is provided by the University of Michigan African Studies Center and the Department of Afroamerican and African Studies.
ONGOING
TISCH APSE
Collection Ensembl e presents the first major reinstallation of UMMA’s iconic entry space in over a decade. It exchanges Alumni Memorial Hall’s previous focus on European and American painting for a broad mix of American, European, African, and Asian art from across media, sampling the Museum’s remarkable, disparate holdings. The installation is organized into thematic and formal vignettes that respond to the concepts and ideas resonating from an extraordinary large-scale photograph of a vacant cathedral by contemporary German artist Candida Höfer. Featuring works of art by numerous famous and not-so-famous artists, many of them artists of color and women—including Charles Alston, Christo, Theaster Gates, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Do-Ho Suh, Kara Walker, and others, Collection Ensemble reimagines the collection not as a fixed entity with one set of meanings to be unearthed, but instead as an active, creative, sometimes startling source of material and ideas, open for debate and interpretation.
Opening Exhibitions
FEBRUARY 15–MAY 17, 2020
IRVING STENN, JR. FAMILY GALLERY
Designed as a courtroom installation and a performance series by Roman J. Witt Artist in Residence Courtney McClellan, Witness Lab frames witnessing as a social and artistic act. The gallery collapses courtroom, theater, classroom, laboratory, and artist studio in order to study the relationship between performance and law. In hosting mock trials, court transcript readings, and trial advocacy workshops, the artist investigates who performs the role of witness in our society and how that understanding may map onto the narrower legal definition of the role. The installation will host legal simulations from participating groups, including the Trial Advocacy Society and the Oral Argument Competition from the University of Michigan Law School, as well as the undergraduate team of the Collegiate American Mock Trial Association. Taking the role of courtroom sketch artists, or court reporters, students from the U-M Stamps School of Art and Design will observe and document the courtroom performances through drawing, text, photography, and video.
Witness Lab is presented in partnership with the Roman J. Witt Artist in Residence Program of the Stamps School of Art & Design, with lead support provided by the University of Michigan Law School and Office of the Provost.
FEBRUARY 22–OCTOBER 25, 2020
A. ALFRED TAUBMAN GALLERY II
The notion that abstraction was a purely formal and American art form, concerned only with timeless themes disconnected from the present, was met with increased skepticism in the midst of the political and cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. Kaleidoscope, UMMA’s third and final edition of this exhibition series, examines the constantly changing practices of local Detroit artists, women artists, and artists of color as they actively embraced abstraction’s possibilities. Their strategies dramatically transformed the practice of abstraction in a shifting American political landscape.
Closing Exhibitions
THROUGH FEBRUARY 9, 2020
A. ALFRED TAUBMAN GALLERY II
In the midst of the political and cultural upheavals of the ’60s and ’70s, artists, critics, and the public grappled with the relationship between art, politics, race, and feminism. During these decades, the notion that abstraction was a purely formal and American art form, concerned only with timeless themes disconnected from the present, was met with increased skepticism. Women artists and artists of color began to actively and assertively explore abstraction’s possibilities. The artworks in Abstraction, Color, and Politics: The 1960s and 1970s demonstrate both radical and disarming changes in how artists worked and what they thought their art was about. Their new formal and intellectual strategies—seen here across large-scale and miniature work—dramatically transformed the practice of abstraction in the 1960s and 1970s in a politically shifting American landscape.
UMMA gratefully acknowledges the following donors for their generous support:
Lead Exhibition Sponsors: University of Michigan Office of the Provost, Michigan Medicine, and College of Literature, Science, and the Arts; Exhibition Endowment Donors: Richard and Rosann Noel Endowment Fund, Herbert W. and Susan L. Johe Endowment, and Robert and Janet Miller Fund; University of Michigan Funding Partners: Institute for Research on Women and Gender, School of Social Work, Department of Political Science, and Department of Women’s Studies.
THROUGH FEBRUARY 23, 2020
ARTGYM
Come help build our collection of “ordinary” American 20th-century photographs.
Take Your Pick invites you—the Museum’s visitors—to select photographs for our permanent collection. What belongs in a permanent collection, and why? Who and what should be represented, and how should we decide? This exhibition considers these questions in regard to 1,000 amateur photographs on loan from the private collection of Peter J. Cohen, who has gathered more than 60,000 snapshots while exploring flea markets in the United States and Europe over two decades. The images he has collected depict all aspects of daily life and reveal the dynamic histories of amateur photography. Such pictures have particular significance in the current digital age, when it is much less common to make physical copies of personal photographs. They constitute important artifacts of twentieth-century visual culture and precedents for the photographs we still make today.
Voting ended on January 12.
Final selections on view: January 14–February 23, 2020
Guided Exhibitions & Gallery Tours
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 2
2–3 p.m.
FORUM
In the midst of the political and cultural upheavals of the 60s and 70s, artists, critics, and the public grappled with the relationship between art, politics, race, and feminism. During these decades, the notion that abstraction was a purely formal and American art form, concerned only with timeless themes disconnected from the present, was met with increased skepticism. Women artists and artists of color began to actively and assertively explore abstraction’s possibilities. The artworks in Abstraction, Color, and Politics: The 1960s and 1970s demonstrate both radical and disarming changes in how artists worked and what they thought their art was about. Their new formal and intellectual strategies—seen here across large-scale and miniature work—dramatically transformed the practice of abstraction in the 1960s and 1970s in a politically shifting American landscape.
UMMA gratefully acknowledges the following donors for their generous support:
Lead Exhibition Sponsors: University of Michigan Office of the Provost, Michigan Medicine, and College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Exhibition Endowment Donors: Richard and Rosann Noel Endowment Fund, Herbert W. and Susan L. Johe Endowment, and Robert and Janet Miller Fund
University of Michigan Funding Partners: Institute for Research on Women and Gender, School of Social Work, Department of Political Science, and Department of Women’s Studies.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 9
2–3 p.m.
MEET AT UMMA SHOP
UMMA’s second exhibition of Inuit art derived from the Power Family’s generous promised gift to the Museum in 2018 explores the relationship between the artist and the representation of everyday experiences. Through a selection of mid-century to contemporary Inuit prints, drawings, and sculptures that portray seemingly ordinary reflections of daily life along with daydreaming meditations, the exhibition bridges the mundane and the fantastic. Together, these artworks present a distinct imagery and a visual poetry culled from the day-to-day reality of life in the far polar north. The perspectives range from soaring gazes at the horizon to glimpses of commonplace social interactions. These contemplations reveal intimate connections among the artists, their communities, and their locale—a specific place and time composed of icy regions and vast seas and tundras. Reflections: An Ordinary Day takes visitors on a lyrical journey of the myriad spaces and routines within an Arctic landscape.
This exhibition is made possible by the Power Family Program for Inuit Art, established in 2018 through the generosity of Philip and Kathy Power.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16
2–3 p.m.
MEET AT UMMA SHOP
Collection Ensemble presents the first major reinstallation of UMMA’s iconic entry space in over a decade. It exchanges Alumni Memorial Hall’s previous focus on European and American painting for a broad mix of American, European, African, and Asian art from across media, sampling the Museum’s remarkable, disparate holdings. The installation is organized into thematic and formal vignettes that respond to the concepts and ideas resonating from an extraordinary large-scale photograph of a vacant cathedral by contemporary German artist Candida Höfer. Featuring works of art by numerous famous and not-so-famous artists, many of them artists of color and women—including Charles Alston, Christo, Theaster Gates, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Do-Ho Suh, Kara Walker, and others, Collection Ensemble reimagines the collection not as a fixed entity with one set of meanings to be unearthed, but instead as an active, creative, sometimes startling source of material and ideas, open for debate and interpretation.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23
2–3 p.m.
MEET AT UMMA SHOP
Join a docent on a journey through time and memory, as you explore over 1,000 found photographs together. Take Your Pick invites you—the Museum’s visitors—to select photographs for our permanent collection. What belongs in a permanent collection, and why? Who and what should be represented, and how should we decide? This exhibition considers these questions in regard to 1,000 amateur photographs on loan from the private collection of Peter J. Cohen, who has gathered more than 60,000 snapshots while exploring flea markets in the United States and Europe over two decades. The images he has collected depict all aspects of daily life and reveal the dynamic histories of amateur photography. Such pictures have particular significance in the current digital age, when it is much less common to make physical copies of personal photographs. They constitute important artifacts of twentieth-century visual culture and precedents for the photographs we still make today.
UMMA Programs & Events
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 6
5:30–6:30 p.m.
HELMUT STERN AUDITORIUM
Ilya Kaminsky’s widely acclaimed parable in poems, Deaf Republic (Graywolf, 2019), reads like a two-act political drama in which lyric poems trace the experiences of citizens living under martial law. A New Yorker review called it a work of “profound imagination.” Poems from Deaf Republic were awarded Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize and the Pushcart Prize.
Kaminsky is also the author of Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004), and Musica Humana (Chapiteau Press, 2002). Kaminsky has won the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and the Foreword Magazine’s Best Poetry Book of the Year award. Recently, he was on the short-list for the Neustadt International Literature Prize. His poems have been translated into numerous languages and his books have been published in many countries including Turkey, Holland, Russia, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain and China, where his poetry was awarded the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize. His poems have been compared to work by Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, and Marina Tsvetaeva.
He is the editor of several anthologies, among them The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Ecco, 2010), co-edited with Susan Harris, which John Ashbery praised as “immediately indispensable;” A God in the House: Poets Talk About Faith (Tupelo Press, 2012), co-edited with Katherine Towler; Gossip and Metaphysics: Russian Modernist Poets and Prose (Tupelo Press, 2014), co-edited with Katie Farris and Valzhyna Mort; and In the Shape of the Human Body I am Visiting the Earth: Poems from Far and Wide (McSweeney’s, 2017) with Dominic Luxford and Jesse Nathan. With Jean Valentine, he has co-translated Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva.
This event is free and open to the public. Onsite book sales will be provided by Literati Bookstore.
UMMA is pleased to be the site for the Zell Visiting Writers Series , which brings outstanding writers each semester. The Series is made possible through a generous gift from U-M alumna Helen Zell (AB ’64, LLDHon ’13).
For any questions about the event or to share accommodation needs, please email asbates@umich.edu– we are eager to help ensure that this event is inclusive to you.
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 7
7–8 p.m.
HELMUT STERN AUDITORIUM
One MFA student of fiction and one of poetry, each introduced by a peer, will read their work. The Mark Webster Reading Series presents emerging writers in a warm and relaxed setting.
This week’s reading features Sofia Ergas Groopman and Isabel Neal.
Sofia Ergas Groopman is a writer from New York. She is a second year in the Helen Zell Writers Program and lives with her dachshund, Roger, in Ann Arbor.
Isabel is a poet and educator from Boston. She is a Gemini.
This event is free and open to the public. For any questions about the event or to share accommodation needs, please email asbates@umich.edu– we are eager to help ensure that this event is inclusive to you.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8
11 a.m.–1 p.m.
MULTIPURPOSE ROOM
This event is free, but registration is required. Click here to register.
Families with children ages six and up are invited to look, learn, and create together in this hands-on workshop inspired by UMMA’s second exhibition of Inuit Art, Reflections: An Ordinary Day. Guided by local artist Sajeev Vadakoottu, participants will make a drawing of an image from their own imagination directly on a screen, essentially creating a stencil, and use that stencil to make prints on paper, bags or t-shirts. (Please bring your own canvas bags or t-shirts!)
Please note: Adults must accompany children. We cannot guarantee your spot if you arrive more than 15 minutes late.
Family Art Studio is generously supported by the University of Michigan Credit Union Arts Adventures Program, UMMA’s Lead Sponsor for Student and Family Engagement.
This exhibition is made possible by the Power Family Program for Inuit Art, established in 2018 through the generosity of Philip and Kathy Power.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8
2–4 p.m.
MULTIPURPOSE ROOM
This event is free, but registration is required. Click here to register.
Families with children ages six and up are invited to look, learn, and create together in this hands-on workshop inspired by UMMA’s second exhibition of Inuit Art, Reflections: An Ordinary Day. Guided by local artist Sajeev Vadakoottu, participants will make a drawing of an image from their own imagination directly on a screen, essentially creating a stencil, and use that stencil to make prints on paper, bags or t-shirts. (Please bring your own canvas bags or t-shirts!)
Please note: Adults must accompany children. We cannot guarantee your spot if you arrive more than 15 minutes late.
Family Art Studio is generously supported by the University of Michigan Credit Union Arts Adventures Program, UMMA’s Lead Sponsor for Student and Family Engagement.
This exhibition is made possible by the Power Family Program for Inuit Art, established in 2018 through the generosity of Philip and Kathy Power.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 9
10–11 a.m.
LIZZIE AND JONATHAN TISCH APSE
This is a free event, however registration is required. Click here to register.
Participate in the ancient practice of yoga in the beautiful surroundings of the Museum of Art. This will be gentle yoga, especially appropriate for students in the throes of midterms, led by a U-M RecSports teacher. All levels and community members welcome. This event is free but registration is required. Please bring your own yoga mat.
Student programming at UMMA is generously supported by the University of Michigan Credit Union Arts Adventures Program, UMMA’s Lead Sponsor for Student and Family Engagement.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 9
3–4 p.m.
ARTGYM
This event is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Click here to register.
The votes are in! For the last four months UMMA visitors have voted for their top favorite photographs of the 1,000 on view in the Take Your Pick exhibition. Now what? Join Jennifer M. Friess, Assistant Curator of Photography, to look at the 250 winning photographs that will be acquired into the Museum’s permanent collection and discuss the exciting research and exhibition potential of this new acquisition, as well as the significance of snapshot photography in the digital age.
Support for this exhibition is provided by Cecilia and Mark Vonderheide and the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, Department of Film, Television, and Media, and Department of American Culture.
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 16
3–4 p.m.
ELEANOR NOYES CRUMPACKER GALLERY
Please join us for a monthly gathering that offers a starting point to discover a variety of narratives pertaining to the cultures of North American Indigenous people featuring the works of Inuit authors. We will meet on the third Sunday of each month in the University of Michigan Museum of Art’s exhibition, Reflections: An Ordinary Day. The prints, drawings, and sculptures featured in this exhibition of Inuit art explore the relationship between the artist and the representation of everyday experiences. Each of the four gatherings will present an opportunity to enjoy traditional storytelling as well as discuss books written by contemporary Inuit and Native American authors. Our book club facilitator is Elizabeth James, a Detroit-based Powhatan storyteller and Program Manager at the U-M Department for AfroAmerican and African Studies. The February book is House Made of Dawn [50th Anniversary Ed]: A Novel (P.S.) Anniversary Edition by N. Scott Momaday.
This exhibition is made possible by the Power Family Program for Inuit Art, established in 2018 through the generosity of Philip and Kathy Power.
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 17
5:30–7 p.m.
Helmut Stern Auditorium
Co-presented by the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series and UMMA
Courtney McClellan is an artist and writer from Greensboro, N.C., and the current Roman Witt Artist in Residence at the Stamps School of Art & Design. Her work addresses public ritual, institutional space, and objects that invite or demand speech. Her explorations result in sculpture, performance, installation, writing, and video. Her studio practice includes experimenting with materials, but also reaches to fields like law, theater, and journalism. For the past five years she has studied legal simulation.
At UMMA, McClellan will mount Witness Lab, an architectural courtroom installation and performance series. The facsimile courtroom located in the glassed-in Stenn Gallery will host legal simulations from participating groups including The Trial Advocacy Society and the Oral Argument Competition from the University of Michigan Law School, as well as the undergraduate team of the Collegiate American Mock Trial Association. Additionally, court transcript readings and trial advocacy workshops will be performed in the gallery. Stamps students will observe and document the courtroom activity through drawing, text, photography, and video. The accumulated documents will result in a publication.
Witness Lab offers audiences a complex truth. By studying the courtroom as a space of performance, and the lawyers as agents of justice, participants and passersby consider the physical and social architecture of the law.
Witness Lab is presented in partnership with the Roman Witt Artist in Residence Program of the Stamps School of Art & Design, with lead support provided by the University of Michigan Law School and Office of the Provost.
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18
8–9 p.m.
LIZZIE AND JONATHAN TISCH APSE
Acclaimed by The New Yorker as “an American Master,” Composer David Lang is part visionary sound artist, part musical mad scientist. With one foot in the classical tradition and one in the future, his music explores meaning and musical relationships in a way that is at once fiercely intellectual and plain-spoken. Join the U-M Chamber Choir, under the direction of Eugene Rogers, for a stunning performance of Lang’s Pulitzer-Prize winning work, the little match girl passion. The New York Times describes this touching work as “understated and ethereal… tender and mysterious.” The performance on February 18 will be the opening event of his week-long William Bolcom Guest Residency at the University of Michigan, which will feature performances of his music and other events across campus.
This program is supported by the Katherine Tuck Enrichment Fund and the Greg Hodes and Heidi Hertel Hodes—Partners in the Arts Endowment Fund.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20
5:30–6:30 p.m.
HELMUT STERN AUDITORIUM
Catherine Lacey’s short story collection, Certain American States (FSG, 2018), portrays Americans tortured by the mundanity of their lives. The Chicago Tribune calls it “exactly what you would expect from Lacey: perfect sentences, penetrating insights, devastating epiphanies.”
Lacey is also the author of The Answers (FSG, 2017), a New York Times Top 10 Book of 2017, and Nobody is Ever Missing (FSG, 2014), a New Yorker Best Book of 2014. She has won a Whiting Award, was a finalist for the NYPL’s Young Lions Fiction Award, was named one of Granta Magazine’s Best Young American Novelists, and has been compared to both Don DeLillo and Margaret Atwood.
Writing about The Answers , The Los Angeles Times said, “Like the work of Clarice Lispector or Rachel Cusk, Lacey’s novels seem to be on the verge of inventing a new genre somewhere between prose poem and fugue state.” Discussing The Answers with Interview Magazine, Lacey notes, “I want things to be both beautiful and readable. I’m not trying to alienate a reader, or make someone think they can’t read it because they like more commercial things. I hope that there’s room for any sort of mind to encounter the book.”
Her work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Dutch and German. With Forsyth Harmon, she co-authored a nonfiction book, The Art of the Affair . Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly , The Believer , The Paris Review Daily , The Atlantic , and others.
This event is free and open to the public. Onsite book sales will be provided by Literati Bookstore.
UMMA is pleased to be the site for the Zell Visiting Writers Series , which brings outstanding writers each semester. The Series is made possible through a generous gift from U-M alumna Helen Zell (AB ’64, LLDHon ’13).
For any questions about the event or to share accommodation needs, please email asbates@umich.edu –we are eager to help ensure that this event is inclusive to you.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22
11:15 a.m.–12 p.m.
MEET AT UMMA SHOP
Storytime at the Museum promotes art enjoyment for our youngest patrons. Join us as we travel around the world and look at art from different countries. We read a story in the galleries and include a fun, age-appropriate, hands-on activity related to it. Parents must accompany children. Siblings are welcome to join the group. Meet in front of the UMMA Shop.
Storytime is generously supported by the University of Michigan Credit Union Arts Adventures Program, UMMA’s Lead Sponsor for Student and Family Engagement.
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22
7–8 p.m.
A. ALFRED TAUBMAN GALLERY I
Radio Campfire and UMMA present Town Square — audio stories that unfold in public places
Set to the backdrop of artist Cullen Washington’s large scale abstract Agoras paintings, this Radio Campfire event will feature a series of creative audio stories, soundscapes, and sonic postcards that, like Washington’s paintings, tell us stories about the places where civic life ensues.
Radio Campfire is a community listening event series based in southeast Michigan. Going to a Radio Campfire is “like going to the movies for your ears.” We gather, we dim the lights, and listen to a specially curated selection of creative audio stories on a theme. If you like podcasts, you’ll love Radio Campfire.
Inspired by the UMMA exhibition Cullen Washington, Jr.: The Public Square (on view through May 17, 2020), Radio Campfire: Town Square will be hosted and produced by Stephanie Rowden and Juliet Hinely.
The event begins at 7 p.m. Doors open at 6:45 p.m. The gallery is located on Floor 2 of the Alumni Memorial Hall building. UMMA is wheelchair accessible.
This event is best for ages 14+
