UMMA: Exhibitions and events for October

Opening Exhibitions

MARI KATAYAMA
OCTOBER 12, 2019–JANUARY 26, 2020IRVING STENN, JR. FAMILY GALLERY

Japanese artist Mari Katayama (born 1987) features her own body in a provocative series of works combining photography, sculpture, and textile. Born with a developmental condition, the artist had both her legs amputated at the age of nine and has worn prosthetics ever since. In order to fill a deep gap between her own understanding of self and physicality, and contemporary society’s simplistic categorizations, Katayama began to explore her identity by objectifying her body in her art. In photographs she assumes different personas, dressed in revealing lingerie in private, domestic spaces or in dramatic waterscapes. The unflinching display of the vulnerabilities and limits of Katayama’s body opens up a broader conversation about anxieties and wounds for all of us—disabled or nondisabled—living in an age obsessed with body image. UMMA’s installation will be the artist’s first solo exhibition in the U.S.

Continuing Exhibitions

THE POWER FAMILY PROGRAM FOR INUIT ART: TILLIRNANNGITTUQ
THROUGH OCTOBER 27, 2019SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS GALLERY

Two fascinating stories converge in one very special exhibition: One tracks the development and subsequent worldwide acclaim of contemporary Inuit art from the Canadian Arctic. The other traces the Power family’s seminal role in supporting Inuit art and introducing it to a U.S. audience. Seventy years ago, neither the Inuit artists nor the Power family could have foreseen the tremendous popularity that this work would come to enjoy. Taking its title from the Inuktitut word for “unexpected,” this stirring exhibition showcases 58 works from the collection of Philip and Kathy Power, most from the very early contemporary period of the 1950s and 60s. Included are exquisite sculptures of ivory, bone, and stone, as well as stonecut and stencil prints, some from the first annual Inuit print collection in 1959. Among the renowned Inuit artists featured in this historic survey are Kanaginak Pootoogook, Kenojuak Ashevak, Lucy Qinnuayuak, Niviaksiak, Osuitok Ipeelee and Johnny Inukpuk.
The exhibition also serves as a promising launch pad for future groundbreaking research, exhibitions, and programming related to Inuit art and culture at the University of Michigan, thanks to the generosity of the Power family.

NEW AT UMMA: WALTER OLTMANN
THROUGH NOVEMBER 17, 2019THE CONNECTOR

Infant Skull II, a woven “tapestry” made out of very fine aluminum wire, only reveals its shape when seen from afar. Drawing inspiration from his country’s basketry traditions, the South African artist Walter Oltmann (b. 1960) alternates densely layered sections with open spaces, allowing the underlying surface of the work to show through. The skull that emerges is, in a South African context, evocative of the Cradle of Humankind—a series of caves outside Johannesburg, where some of the oldest hominin fossils in the world have been found.
The work complements UMMA’s renowned and growing collection of historical and contemporary African art and reminds us of the central role of Africa in the history of humankind.

COPIES AND INVENTION IN EAST ASIA
THROUGH JANUARY 5, 2020A. ALFRED TAUBMAN GALLERY I

Far from being frowned upon as uncreative, in China, Korea, and Japan, copying has long been considered a valuable practice. Through works of art spanning ancient to contemporary times,  Copies and Invention in East Asia  challenges our understanding of originality, and presents copying as an act of imaginative interpretation. The exhibition includes burial goods that conjure a world for the deceased; Buddhist sculptures produced in multiples to amplify religious experience and meaning; paintings in which a master’s brushstrokes are faithfully duplicated as a way of shaping the self; and contemporary works that address multiplicity and duplication in the modern world.

TAKE YOUR PICK: COLLECTING FOUND PHOTOGRAPHS
THROUGH FEBRUARY 23, 2020ARTGYM

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. You are invited to make your voice heard in the selection process by voting for the photographs that resonate most with you!  
Vote for your favorite pictures: September 21, 2019–January 12, 2020Final selections on view: January 14–February 23, 2020
(Please note that these dates have been updated from what was announced in our September email.)

ABSTRACTION, COLOR, AND POLITICS: THE 1960s AND 1970s
THROUGH FEBRUARY 9, 2020A. 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.

PAN-AFRICAN PULP: A COMMISSION BY MELEKO MOKGOSI
THROUGH FALL 2021VERTICAL 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.

COLLECTION ENSEMBLE
ONGOING
TISCH APSE
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 forty-one famous and not-so-famous artists, many of them artists of color and women—including Charles Alston, Khaled al-Saa’i, Norio Azuma, Christo, Theaster Gates, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Dinh Q. Lê, 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.

Guided Exhibitions and Gallery Tours

ABSTRACTION, COLOR, AND POLITICS: THE 1960s AND 1970s
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 62–3 p.m.
MEET AT UMMA SHOP
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.

TAKE YOUR PICK: COLLECTING FOUND PHOTOGRAPHS
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 132–3 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. You are invited to make your voice heard in the selection process by voting for the photographs that resonate most with you!  

COLLECTION ENSEMBLESUNDAY, OCTOBER 202–3 p.m.
MEET AT UMMA SHOP

The reinstallation of UMMA’s Apse, Collection Ensemble , highlights the breadth and variety of the Museum’s collection and juxtaposes works of art from different artists, periods, areas, and media. The installation is organized around a very large photograph of a Baroque church by Candida Höfer. From this centerpiece, the works of art are grouped in scenes or distinctive vignettes comprised of a broad mix of American, European, African, and Asian art from across media. The reinstallation doesn’t adhere to either chronological or geographic boundaries. Vera Grant, UMMA’s Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and curator of this installation, says: “The exhibition recasts the role of the collection as an active, creative, sometimes startling source of material and ideas, open for debate and interpretation. The arrangements remind us that works of art can change in meaning and affect when placed in new contexts.” Join an UMMA docent to explore and interpret this exciting new project.

THE POWER FAMILY PROGRAM FOR INUIT ART: TILLIRNANNGITTUQ
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 272–3 p.m.MEET AT UMMA SHOP

In celebration of UMMA’s new Power Family Program for Inuit Art , the Museum presents a special exhibition of two incredible, intertwining stories. One traces the development of contemporary Inuit art in the Canadian Arctic from the 1950s to the present. The other relates the fascinating story of the Power family’s important role in supporting and promoting Inuit art from the outset, bringing public attention to its artistic strength and cultural importance. The Power family’s collection is unusual in its strong representation of early contemporary carvings, incised drawings on ivory and antler, soapstone sculptures, and prints that evolved as Inuit artists developed their own artistic voices and responded creatively to their changing world. 

UMMA Programs and Events

OPEN OFFICE HOURS WITH DIRECTOR CHRISTINA OLSEN
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 312–1 p.m.LIVING ROOM

Back by popular demand! UMMA Director Christina Olsen wants to chat with you about the Museum. Come say hello, share your reactions to recent exhibitions and changes, and bring your ideas of what you’d like to see at UMMA. Meet Tina in the new, comfortable UMMA Living Rooms in Alumni Memorial Hall.

OPEN OFFICE HOURS WITH DIRECTOR CHRISTINA OLSEN
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 43–4 p.m.LIVING ROOM

Back by popular demand! UMMA Director Christina Olsen wants to chat with you about the Museum. Come say hello, share your reactions to recent exhibitions and changes, and bring your ideas of what you’d like to see at UMMA. Meet Tina in the new, comfortable UMMA Living Rooms in Alumni Memorial Hall.

MARK WEBSTER READING SERIES
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 47–8 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. We encourage you to bring your friends–a Webster reading makes for an enjoyable and enlightening Friday evening.This week’s reading features Nishanth Injam and Monica Rico.Nishanth Injam is a fiction writer from Telangana, India. He currently lives in Ann Arbor. Monica Rico is a second generation Mexican-American from Saginaw, MI and a 2019 CantoMundo Fellow. She works for the Bear River Writers’ Conference.