Exhibitions Archive - Chazen Museum of Art https://chazen.wisc.edu/exhibitions/ Mon, 12 Jan 2026 21:09:11 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9 Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection at the Palmer Museum of Art https://chazen.wisc.edu/exhibitions/insistent-presence-contemporary-african-art-from-the-chazen-collection-at-the-palmer-museum-of-art/ Mon, 12 Jan 2026 20:54:36 +0000 https://chazen.wisc.edu/?post_type=chazen_exhibition&p=7953 Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection examines how artists have reimagined the human figure as a lens to pose questions about social […]

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Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection examines how artists have reimagined the human figure as a lens to pose questions about social and political histories, contested identities, and the possible future of how we relate to one another and the spiritual realm. The exhibition presents forty works–sculpture, painting, ceramics, printmaking, and photography–by twenty-four contemporary artists who have lived and worked on the African continent and in the diaspora. The title, Insistent Presence, was inspired by renowned African art scholars and curators Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu. These scholars point to the enduring usefulness of depicting the human figure for artists keen on affirming the humanity of Africans and those critical of postcolonial governments. In this exhibition, artists provocatively explore the human body through juxtapositions of those political concerns with emotions and passions of everyday lived experiences.  

Insistent Presence is organized into three sections exploring the presence and absence of the human body. The first section, “The Body in Society,” explores how identity is shaped through isolation, proximity, and interaction among figures depicted in groups or individually. The second section, “The Artist is Present,” examines artists’ use of their own bodies as their primary artistic medium. Works in the final section, “The Absent Body,” remain resolutely non-figurative. Accessories and accoutrements prompt the viewer to form a mental image of the body. Each section in Insistent Presence highlights 21st-century ways of being in the world and invites us to reflect on ourselves, our relationships, and the worlds we inhabit.  

Artists represented in the exhibition span the continent of Africa, from Tunisia and Egypt to Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Mozambique and South Africa. Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Togo, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania are also among the countries represented. The works are drawn from the Chazen Museum of Art’s Contemporary African Art Initiative, a five-year project supported by the Straus Family Foundation that built upon several contemporary African artworks the Chazen collected in the late 1990s. The exhibition opened at the Chazen in 2023. 

This exhibition, which is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue, is organized by the Chazen Museum of Art and presented by the Palmer Museum of Art.  The Palmer Museum of Art’s presentation of the exhibition is overseen by Amanda Hellman, Director, with support provided by the Michael J. and Aimee Rusinko Kakos Dean’s Chair in the College of Arts and Architecture. 

Above: Nana Yaw Oduro (Ghanaian, b. 1994) PHILIP, 2019, inkjet print, 19-5/8 x 29-1/2 inches. Sara Guyer and Scott Straus Contemporary African Art Initiative made possible by the Straus Family Foundation, 2021.28.3

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Panczenko MFA Prize Exhibition: Anne E. Stoner https://chazen.wisc.edu/exhibitions/panczenko-mfa-prize-exhibition-anne-e-stoner/ Mon, 12 Jan 2026 19:47:13 +0000 https://chazen.wisc.edu/?post_type=chazen_exhibition&p=7948 The 2026 Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize winner is Anne E. Stoner. The prize is offered annually by the museum in collaboration with the […]

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The 2026 Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize winner is Anne E. Stoner.

The prize is offered annually by the museum in collaboration with the UW–Madison Art Department and offers a unique professional development opportunity for award winners. The selected artist is featured in an exhibition and gains experience throughout the entire process of the project, from collaborating with professional staff on layout and design, to marketing and program development. Selected by an outside juror, the winning artist also receives an honorarium.

This year’s juror is Tyler Blackwell (he/him), a curator, arts administrator, and museum leader from Fort Worth, Texas. He is currently the curator of contemporary art at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. Specializing in queer and historically underrepresented artist practices, post-1960s abstract painting and sculpture, and postcolonial strategies in video and photography, he has worked in university, civic, and encyclopedic art museums and kunsthalles.

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Petah Coyne: How Much A Heart Can Hold at the Lowe Art Museum https://chazen.wisc.edu/exhibitions/petah-coyne-how-much-a-heart-can-hold-at-the-lowe-art-museum/ Mon, 15 Dec 2025 15:41:20 +0000 https://chazen.wisc.edu/?post_type=chazen_exhibition&p=7855 On view at the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, now through March 14, 2026. How Much A Heart Can Hold invites the viewer to […]

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On view at the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, now through March 14, 2026.

How Much A Heart Can Hold invites the viewer to explore Petah Coyne’s work as a multifaceted and long-running conversation about the complexity and creativity of women.

It is divided into three sections: Women’s Work, Women’s Relationships, and Women Obscured & Transformed. Originally intended as an exhibition organizational structure that avoided the pull of a chronological arrangement, it is now clear that all the works reside in each of the categories, and now these three threads weave and plait together as part of a more nuanced understanding not only of Coyne’s oeuvre, but also how a single artist’s work is intertwined and in dialogue with friends and creatives both near in time and space, and long past or far afield.

Petah Coyne: How Much A Heart Can Hold was organized by the Chazen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin–Madison. Generous support for this exhibition was provided by Stephen and Pamela Hootkin, and the Anonymous Fund. The Lowe Art Museum’s presentation was made possible by Beaux Arts Miami; the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; the Funding Arts Network; the City of Coral Gables; Galerie Lelong, New York; the Lowe Advisory Council; and Lowe Members. It was sponsored in part by the State of Florida through the Division of Arts and Culture and the National Endowment for the Arts.

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Insistent Presence at the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University https://chazen.wisc.edu/exhibitions/insistent-presence-at-the-michael-c-carlos-museum-at-emory-university/ Thu, 02 Oct 2025 20:41:19 +0000 https://chazen.wisc.edu/?post_type=chazen_exhibition&p=7692 Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection Insistent Presence now on view at the Carlos presents more than forty works of sculpture, painting, […]

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Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection

Insistent Presence now on view at the Carlos presents more than forty works of sculpture, painting, ceramics, printmaking, and photography by twenty-three contemporary artists living and working on the African continent and in the diaspora.  Insistent Presence examines how artists have reimagined the human figure as a lens to pose questions about social and political histories, contested identities, and the possible future of how we relate to one another. The exhibition title was inspired by renowned African art scholars and curators Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu. These scholars point to the enduring usefulness of depicting the human figure for artists keen on affirming the humanity of Africans and those critical of postcolonial governments. In this exhibition, artists provocatively explore the human body through juxtapositions of those political concerns with emotions and passions of everyday lived experiences.

The exhibition and its accompanying publication are organized into three discrete sections along the notions of the presence and absence of the human body. The first section, “The Body in Society,” explores how identity is shaped through isolation, proximity, and interaction among figures depicted in groups or individually. These artists are concerned with the human form as an avenue for expressing the intersections and ruptures between privately and socially constructed identities. The second section, “The Artist Is Present,” examines artists’ production strategies of using their own bodies as the primary medium. These artists share their personal histories through theatrical performances, photography, and sculpture.  Works in the final section, “The Absent Body,” remain resolutely non-figurative. Accessories and accouterments prompt the viewer to form a mental image of the body. Each section in Insistent Presence highlights twenty-first-century ways of being in the world and invites us to reflect on ourselves, our relationships, and the worlds we inhabit. The works expand the museum’s permanent collection while also strengthening the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s collaborative relationships with living artists and contemporary organizations on the African continent.

Insistent Presence: Contemporary African Art from the Chazen Collection was organized by The Chazen Museum of Art at The University of Wisconsin–Madison and curated by Guest Curator Margaret Nagawa. Generous support for this exhibition was provided by the Straus Family Foundation.

This exhibition has been made possible in Atlanta by the generous financial support of the Charles S. Ackerman Fund, the Carlos Museum Endowment, the Carlos Museum National Leadership Board, the Mellon Teaching and Training Endowment, and the Carlos Museum Permanent Collection Conservation Fund.

Above: Nana Yaw Oduro (Ghanaian, b. 1994), PHILIP, 2019, inkjet print, 19 5/8 x 29 1/2 in., Sara Guyer and Scott Straus Contemporary African Art Initiative made possible by the Straus Family Foundation, 2021.28.3

 

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Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within https://chazen.wisc.edu/exhibitions/toshiko-takaezu-worlds-within/ Thu, 01 May 2025 16:17:12 +0000 https://chazen.wisc.edu/?post_type=chazen_exhibition&p=7193 Above: Toshiko Takaezu with works later combined in the Star Series (c. 1994–2001), including (from left to right) Sahu, Nommo, Emme Ya, Unas, and Po […]

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Above: Toshiko Takaezu with works later combined in the Star Series (c. 1994–2001), including (from left to right) Sahu, Nommo, Emme Ya, Unas, and Po Tolo (Dark Companion), 1998. Photo: Tom Grotta. Courtesy of browngrotta arts. © Family of Toshiko Takaezu

 

Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within is on view at the Chazen Museum of Art September 8–December 23, 2025. The exhibition is the first nationally touring retrospective of Takaezu’s work in twenty years. Takaezu taught at UW–Madison 1954–1955.

This retrospective aims to trace the evolution of her practice and reframe Takaezu as one of the most compelling and conceptually innovative American artists of the last century. It will serve as an in-depth consideration of the range, depth, and development of Takaezu’s work, with a particular focus on the worlds she conjured within individual forms, and in stunning environmental installations. The title of the show is meant to evoke the vital sense of resonant space expressed in Takaezu’s work, and allude to her assertion that the most important aspect of her closed forms is “the dark space that you can’t see” — the hidden worlds within.

Of Okinawan heritage and born in Hawai‘i, Toshiko Takaezu was a groundbreaking twentieth-century abstract artist most celebrated for her prolific output of expressively glazed “closed form” ceramic sculptures that ranged in scale from palm-sized works to immersive sculptural environments. Seeking to harness the expressive potential of both abstract painting and sculpture, Takaezu radically reimagined the vessel form as a pliable three-dimensional canvas, and as site for limitless experimentation. Takaezu’s phenomenal hybrid practice, which was informed both by her cross-cultural heritage and deep appreciation for the living environment, also included innovative work in painting, weaving, and bronze-cast sculpture. She often displayed these varied works alongside and in productive dialogue with her ceramic works to create captivating environments. Similar to her friend Isamu Noguchi, Takaezu’s boundary-crossing practice defies limiting art historical categorization and stands as an endlessly creative and inspiring model for making and being.

The retrospective is organized by The Isamu Noguchi Foundation and Garden Museum, with assistance from the Toshiko Takaezu Foundation and the Takaezu family. It is co-curated by art historian Glenn Adamson, Noguchi Museum Curator Kate Wiener, and composer and sound artist Leilehua Lanzilotti. The exhibition was conceived and developed with former Noguchi Museum Senior Curator Dakin Hart. The show first opened at The Noguchi Museum featuring more than 200 works from private and public collections around the country

ABOUT TOSHIKO TAKAEZU
Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011) was one of the twentieth century’s greatest abstract artists. Gifted with prodigious drive and vision, she combined inspirations from her own cultural background with currents from contemporary painting and sculpture, arriving at a unique expressionist idiom. Takaezu was born in Pepeʻekeo, Hawaiʻi to Okinawan emigré parents, and received her early training in ceramics, weaving, and sculpture in Honolulu, as a student at the University of Hawaiʻi, Manoa (1948–51) with teachers including Claude Horan. She continued her studies at the Cranbrook Academy of Art (1951–54) under the instruction of Maija Grotell, who would become a mentor of profound influence, as well as Marianne Strengell, and Bill McVey. In her early career Takaezu expanded the possibilities of the vessel, exploring multiple spouts and lobed forms, and made plates that were essentially canvases for freeform composition. Though made using traditional pottery techniques of wheel-throwing and glazing, the innovative ceramic works which she soon developed, and for which she is best known—the closed forms—are best understood as sculptures, or perhaps as paintings-in-the-round. Through her expressive brushstrokes, dynamic glazes, exploration of sound, and trust in chance, Takaezu imbued clay with a life that existed far beyond when it emerged from the kiln. Across her seven-decade career, Takaezu also pursued media apart from ceramics, including large-scale textiles, acrylic paintings, and cast-bronze sculpture, which extended her vocabulary of vivid abstraction. During her lifetime, Takaezu was also a profoundly influential teacher and mentor, who trained generations of younger artists at the Cranbrook Academy of Art, The University of Wisconsin, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and Princeton University, and other institutions. Her legacy lives on in these students and apprentices, and above all in her own work, which both exemplifies and transcends the ideals of modernist ceramic art. Another testament to her legacy, Takaezu was named a Living Treasure of Hawai‘i (1987), received the Gold Medal Award from the American Craft Council (1994), and received the Konjuhosho Award (2010), conferred by the emperor of Japan on individuals who have made significant contributions to Japanese society, as well as many other accolades.

RECEPTION AND LECTURE

The standing-room-only lecture by co-curator Glenn Adamson was followed by a reception in the Mead Witter lobby Oct. 8, 2025.

From left: Katherine Alcauskas, Chazen chief curator; artist Martha Glowacki; and Lillian Sizemore, mosaic artist and Marjorie Kreilick scholar.

Former Chazen curator Maria Saffiotti Dale and Sarah Anne Carter, professor and executive director of the Center for Design and Material Culture (CDMC)

Glenn Adamson, co-curator of Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within presents a lecture on the artist. The lecture was sold out with all auditorium seats filled and overflow guests watching simulcasts in the Mead Witter lobby and the object study room.

Works from Takaezu’s Star Series on view in the back Rowland gallery.

Museum visitors fill the Rowland galleries after the Glenn Adamson lecture.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Corpus: an exhibition by Anamika Singh https://chazen.wisc.edu/exhibitions/the-russell-and-paula-panczenko-mfa-prize/ Tue, 11 Feb 2025 22:17:18 +0000 https://chazen.wisc.edu/?post_type=chazen_exhibition&p=7059 The 2025 Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize exhibition Corpus: an exhibition by Anamika Singh grows out of Singh’s film Sheetla, which follows the Hindi […]

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The 2025 Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize exhibition

Corpus: an exhibition by Anamika Singh grows out of Singh’s film Sheetla, which follows the Hindi language daily journal Jan Morcha and its role in reporting the highly contested desecration of the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, Faizabad in 1992. The exhibition interrogates the way that archaeology is instrumentalized as a strategy of control and nationalism. Singh’s work underscores the close resemblance between remnants of urban destruction and debris of architectural construction. Corpus asks, “What does it mean for symbols of power and progress to be forged from the debris of violence?”

The Russell and Paula Panczenko MFA Prize is offered annually by the museum in collaboration with the UW–Madison Art Department and offers a unique professional development opportunity for award winners. The selected artist is featured in an exhibition at the Chazen and gains experience throughout the entire process of the project, from collaborating on layout and design to marketing and program development. Selected by an outside juror, the winning artist also receives an honorarium. This year’s juror was Lumi Tan, a curator and writer based in New York City.

Black and white photo of Anamika Singh

Anamika Singh, photo by Agya Salas

About the artist

Anamika Singh (b. India 1995; active New York City and Madison, Wisconsin) is a transdisciplinary artist and researcher whose work contends with the contested histories produced by transfers and flows of power and violence. Singh received her BFA from the Cooper Union School of Art and is currently an MFA fellow at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where she is working on Corpus, her forthcoming body of work. Singh has taught at Rutgers University-Newark and given guest lectures and talks at institutions such as Architectural Association, The New School, and The Cooper Union. Singh has been the recipient of numerous fellowships, and her work has been exhibited internationally. Singh will begin her doctoral research in the Department of Art and Archaeology at Princeton University in the fall of 2025.

Portrait of Lumi Tan

Curator and writer Lumi Tan, photo by Isabel Asha Penzlien

About the juror

Lumi Tan is a curator and writer based in New York City. She is the curator for the upcoming 2026 Converge45 citywide exhibition in Portland, Oregon and the curator for Frieze Focus New York. She recently served as the Curatorial Director of Luna Luna, a revival of the world’s first art amusement park created by André Heller in 1987 and exhibited in Los Angeles in 2024. Previously, she was Senior Curator at The Kitchen, New York, where she organized exhibitions and produced performances with artists including Kevin Beasley, Meriem Bennani, Gretchen Bender, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Autumn Knight, Moor Mother, Sondra Perry, The Racial Imaginary Institute, Tina Satter, Kenneth Tam, Danh Vo, and Anicka Yi. Tan has also held positions at the Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain Nord Pas-de-Calais, France; Zach Feuer Gallery, New York; and MoMA/P.S.1, New York. Her writing has appeared in The New York TimesArtforumFriezeMousse, Cura, and numerous exhibition catalogues. She was the recipient of 2020 VIA Art Fund Curatorial Fellowship, and has been visiting faculty at School of Visual Arts, New York, Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, and Yale School of Art.

 

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The Crafted World of Wharton Esherick https://chazen.wisc.edu/exhibitions/the-crafted-world-of-wharton-esherick/ Wed, 25 Sep 2024 17:44:38 +0000 https://chazen.wisc.edu/?post_type=chazen_exhibition&p=6616 This exhibition explores the interdisciplinary creativity of Wharton Esherick (1887–1970), the famed American artist best known as the father of the Studio Furniture Movement. Esherick […]

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This exhibition explores the interdisciplinary creativity of Wharton Esherick (1887–1970), the famed American artist best known as the father of the Studio Furniture Movement. Esherick considered his hillside home and studio, now the Wharton Esherick Museum (WEM), the best representation of his iconoclastic vision, calling it “an autobiography in three dimensions.” Built between 1926 and 1966, his unconventional escape on the verdant slopes of Valley Forge Mountain near Philadelphia houses almost three thousand iconic works of art from across Esherick’s seven decades of artistic practice.

The Crafted World brings selections from this rich and rarely loaned collection to a broader public, including many objects never before seen except in Esherick’s home and studio. Detailing the artist’s career from his early woodcut illustrations for books by members of the avant-garde literati to his revolutionary re-imagining of furniture forms as organic sculpture, works will be presented in thematic vignettes that invite visitors into Esherick’s story and bring the essence of his creative world into the gallery.

From the exhibition catalogue:

“THE CRAFTED WORLD OF WHARTON ESHERICK takes you into the visionary landscape of one of the most innovative and influential artists of the twentieth century. A master craftsman and sculptor, Esherick created a world that blurred the boundaries between art and functionality and pushed the limits of wood and design…”

“The exhibition [and accompanying publication] explore themes that are present in the home and Studio, with their rich array of artworks. They also connect Esherick’s artistry to the broader intellectual and creative worlds of which he was an integral part. From sculptural furniture to breathtaking architectural spaces, each image in this publication tells a story of unwavering commitment to craftsmanship and artistic  expression, as well as a deep connection to the medium of wood. Numerous moments of transformation are visible. Most striking, perhaps, is the overall evolution of Esherick’s style, from early works characterized by prismatic shapes and intricate details to later organic and free-flowing designs.

Wharton Esherick, The Race, 1925. Painted wood on walnut base, 6 3/4 x 30 3/4 x 8 1/2 in. Wharton Esherick Museum Collection. Photo by Eoin O’Neill, courtesy of the Wharton Esherick Museum.

“Esherick’s innovative approach to form and function has inspired generations of artists, designers, and makers. His career unfolded as conventional boundaries between fine art and functional craftsmanship were being questioned. Esherick had rich answers to offer. His unique approach to blending form and function resulted in a body of work that challenges categorization. Because of his iconoclasm, Esherick’s work resonates not only with enthusiasts of traditional woodworking, design, and “useful” craft, but also with those who see in his work the very essence of expressive creativity.

“The spaces that Esherick created for himself, in which he lived and worked, offer evidence of one of his core beliefs: that our surroundings can and should reflect our individuality and enhance our lives in meaningful ways. Esherick saw the tactile nature of wood, carefully shaped by his own hands, as a principal means of fulfilling this goal. In his Gesamtkunstwerk—or “total work of art”—the warmth and intimacy of the spaces he created invite us to consider how the intimate objects of everyday life may be imbued with beauty, ritual, and comfort.”

—Julie Siglin and Thomas Padon

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You Belong Here: Place, People, and Purpose in Latinx Photography https://chazen.wisc.edu/exhibitions/you-belong-here-place-people-and-purpose-in-latinx-photography/ Wed, 25 Sep 2024 17:07:43 +0000 https://chazen.wisc.edu/?post_type=chazen_exhibition&p=6612 You Belong Here: Place, People, and Purpose in Latinx Photography celebrates the dynamic photography of Latinx artists across the United States. The exhibition brings together […]

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You Belong Here: Place, People, and Purpose in Latinx Photography celebrates the dynamic photography of Latinx artists across the United States. The exhibition brings together established and emerging artists who tackle themes of political resistance, family and community, fashion and culture, and the complexity of identity in American life.

Artists in the exhibition contribute to a vast visual archive that chronicles the Latinx experience as pluralistic, nuanced, and fluid. They illustrate a range of histories and geographies, contextualize and reinterpret watershed social and artistic movements, stake space for queerness, and articulate the importance of photography within the larger field of Latinx art.

You Belong Here presents contemporary photography that sheds light on social spaces—from intimate portrayals of home and family to collective experiences of the streets and nightlife—as well as on the in-betweenness, or nepantla, of transnational, multiracial, and postcolonial identities. It generates an expansive dialogue about visibility and belonging for Latinx people.

Curated by Pilar Tompkins Rivas, chief curator and deputy director of Curatorial and Collections at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, You Belong Here originates from Tompkins Rivas’s work as guest editor of Latinx, the Winter 2021 issue of Aperture magazine. This exhibition is organized by Aperture.

About Aperture:

Aperture is a nonprofit publisher that leads conversations around photography worldwide. From our base in New York, Aperture connects global audiences and supports artists through our acclaimed quarterly magazine, books, exhibitions, digital platforms, public programs, limited-edition prints, and awards. Established in 1952 to advance “creative thinking, significantly expressed in words and photographs,” Aperture champions photography’s vital role in nurturing curiosity and encouraging a more just, tolerant society.

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cuestiones caribeñas/caribbean matters: assemblage and sculpture by pablo delano https://chazen.wisc.edu/exhibitions/caribbean-matters-cuestiones-caribenas-assemblage-and-sculpture-by-pablo-delano/ Fri, 02 Aug 2024 14:24:58 +0000 https://chazen.wisc.edu/?post_type=chazen_exhibition&p=6451 This exhibition considers contemporary Caribbean reality through the juxtaposition of appropriated photographic images, archival documents and found objects. With irony and wry humor, visual artist […]

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This exhibition considers contemporary Caribbean reality through the juxtaposition of appropriated photographic images, archival documents and found objects. With irony and wry humor, visual artist and photographer Pablo Delano (b. 1954 San Juan, Puerto Rico) subverts longstanding stereotypes and questions historical narratives while also affirming and celebrating the region’s global impact and resistance.

Colonialism and conquest shaped the Caribbean, creating ethnic diversity and social hierarchies. This historical impact is reflected in the archipelago’s distinct cultural and national identities but also in a common Caribbean ethos shared across the former and current Spanish, British, French, Dutch, Danish and U.S. territories. In his first solo exhibition since his participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Delano ponders these Caribbean commonalities, critiquing past and current systems of oppression but also building solidarity rooted in shared histories.

Exhibition co-curators and UW–Madison faculty Jorell Meléndez-Badillo, assistant professor of history, and Aurora Santiago Ortiz, assistant professor of gender and women’s studies and Chicane/Latine studies, are confident “cuestiones caribeñas/caribbean matters” will spark dialogue across disciplines at UW–Madison, from art history and photography to anthropology and gender and women’s studies.

“During this time, it is especially important to center and bring forth the narratives and experiences of migrants and underscore the significance of understanding history and knowing why we are where we are today. It is more important now than ever to recognize our past to critically think about our present and our future,” said Santiago Ortiz.

Delano, the Charles A. Dana professor of fine arts at Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut) and a co-founder of Trinity College’s Center for Caribbean Studies, conceptualizes “cuestiones caribeñas/caribbean matters” as a meditation on the Caribbean condition. The exhibition is informed by Delano’s childhood memories growing up in a tumultuous Cold War-era Puerto Rico; extensive travel and research in Trinidad and throughout the extended Caribbean; and his love of Caribbean literature, film and music. The exhibited works reference a range of themes including migration, tourism, labor, gender, race and debt.

“Caribbean history is global history. It is the place where the different empires merged, and it helped develop the global north. Having an exhibition that critically examines this without pushing a narrative allows people to create and develop their own interpretations of this fractured, complicated and complex past,” said Meléndez-Badillo.

Meléndez-Badillo and Santiago Ortiz have been following Delano’s work for several years, notably “The Museum of the Old Colony.” The art installation examines the United States’ enduring influence and oppression in Puerto Rico through the creation of a performative, fictional “Museum” that includes reproductions of archival photos, original video pieces made from historic film footage as well as sculptural tableaus. Delano named the exhibition after Old Colony, a U.S.-brand soft drink popular in Puerto Rico since the 1950s. The sarcastic reference emphasizes Puerto Rico’s long and ongoing history of colonial rule — first under Spain and then under the United States. Adriano Pedrosa, artistic director of the 2024 Venice Biennale, saw an earlier version of “The Museum of the Old Colony” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Juan, resulting in the work’s inclusion in the Biennale, themed “Foreigners Everywhere.”

Delano learned photography from his father, renowned photographer Jack Delano. After attending Tyler School of Art at Temple University and Yale University, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in painting, Delano returned to photography. He photographed New York’s Caribbean communities of the Lower East Side and Washington Heights. Starting in the late 1990s, he spent a decade photographing in Trinidad and Tobago. There, his fascination with that nation’s process of post-colonial nation-building led to the production of his acclaimed black and white photo book “In Trinidad” (2008). He has been working conceptually, constructing installations and assemblages with appropriated imagery and objects for the last 10 years.

“‘cuestiones caribeñas/caribbean matters’ emphasizes the complexity of the Caribbean’s history,” said Meléndez-Badillo. “It is joyous, but it is also painful and personal.”

 


 

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Petah Coyne: How Much A Heart Can Hold https://chazen.wisc.edu/exhibitions/petah-coyne-how-much-the-heart-can-hold/ Mon, 03 Jun 2024 18:26:06 +0000 https://chazen.wisc.edu/?post_type=chazen_exhibition&p=6352   Experience sprawling sculptural works made of cloth, human hair, scrap metal, wax, silk flowers and other unorthodox materials in Petah Coyne: How Much A […]

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The exhibition catalogue is available in the Chazen Café.

Experience sprawling sculptural works made of cloth, human hair, scrap metal, wax, silk flowers and other unorthodox materials in Petah Coyne: How Much A Heart Can Hold, on view Sept. 9-Dec. 23 at the Chazen Museum of Art. The exhibition features more than a dozen works, several on display for the first time. It serves as both a multi-decade exploration of the contemporary American sculptor’s career and an ode to women’s complexity and creativity.

A quote by Zelda Fitzgerald inspired the exhibition title. “Nobody has ever measured,  even the poets, how much a heart can hold,” the American writer, dancer and painter once said. Coyne’s Zelda, a sculpture named in Fitzgerald’s honor, anchors the exhibition.

“With her, I didn’t plan at all,” explained Coyne. “When I finished it and stood back and looked at it, I knew immediately that that was her.”

At nearly 7 feet tall, the mixed-media work from the Chazen’s collection is made of silk flowers, wax, acrylic paint, white pearl-headed hat pins, artificial pearls, cast-wax statuary figure and hand sculptures, ribbon, knitting needles, fabric, thread, wire, horsehair, drywall, plaster, filament, rubber, steel and wood. It immediately ignites the tactile senses, yet a transparent glass box stands between the viewer and the monochromatic work, representing a cage that is a metaphor for Fitzgerald’s life. Her accomplishments were thwarted by the time in which she lived and overshadowed by her marriage to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Many lines from her letters appear in her husband’s writings.

“I was making this piece after I’d read a lot of her things, and I started putting all these pearls on it. I realized later that I had cast maybe 60 or 70 hands and that these were maybe helping hands to [F. Scott Fitzgerald’s] writing,” Coyne explained.

Coyne reads two to three books per week. Most of them are by women writers. As she sews, she often imagines characters from different books in dialogue with one another. The exhibition’s three sections — “Women’s Work,” “Women Obscured and Transformed” and “Women’s Relationships” — present a view of Coyne’s artistic practice while honoring the literary contributors she loves.

From left: Chazen Director Amy Gilman, Petah Coyne, and designer Maria Tran review pages from the catalogue for the exhibition. The catalogue is available in the Chazen Café.

“We looked across Coyne’s long career and were inspired to focus on the creative work of women as interpreted through Coyne’s artistic process,” said Amy Gilman, director of the Chazen Museum of Art and exhibition curator. “Coyne looks at the woman as a heroine, cultural leader, dissident and activist and as a fellow creative who seeks to transform the deep aspects of consciousness and societal awareness.”

Coyne often celebrates under-recognized female authors and Eastern literary figures. Her works showcase the authors and characters; dissect their complex stories; and examine how relationships, social constructs and self-image can shape how women — real and fictional — experience and navigate the world.

Untitled #1379 (The Doctor’s Wife) (1997–2018) is among the works featured in How Much A Heart Can Hold. The installation of folded hand-sewn Venetian velvet in inky blues, blacks and teal carries the name of a novel by Sawako Ariyoshi. The renowned Japanese writer recalls the true story of Japanese surgeon Hanaoka Seishū and the competition between his wife and mother as they wrestled with their roles in the house and in late-18th-century Japan.

Untitled #720 (Eguchi’s Ghost) (1992/2007) is inspired by Yasunari Kawabata’s disturbing novel The House of the Sleeping Beauties that chronicles the experiences of older men who are allowed to sleep with and look at — but not touch — beautiful sleeping women, thereby evoking dreams of past loves. The sculpture hangs from the ceiling and is made from, among many other things, a 1950s Airstream trailer that has been shredded into thin stainless-steel wire. Coyne discovered the unique shredding process after asking a Yale University graduate student to take her to her favorite place. The student escorted Coyne to a facility that shreds and recycles the metals from cars, trucks, trains and other vehicles. Some of the other materials Coyne used in the artwork are PVC pipe, paper towels, silk Duchesse satin, thread, Velcro and shackles.

Coyne finds materials in various ways and tries to push them as far as she can. Over the years, they have ranged from the organic to the ephemeral including dead fish, mud, sticks, hay, black sand, satin ribbons and taxidermy. When the size of a work reaches more than 70 inches in one direction, her studio assistants put a tape measure on the floor. That’s her warning. “If I want to show the piece and not keep it for the rest of my life, then I better watch out,” she said. “I’m the person who makes the piece and then realizes it will have to go out the window.”

Coyne admits that pre-planning is not a part of her artistic process. While other artists start with mockups and drawings, she allows her feelings to guide her work. Although she has her own ideas about her finished works, she wants viewers to experience her art in the same way she approaches creating it — with an open heart. “I hope they open up their hearts and just look at the pieces,” she said. “It doesn’t matter what I feel about the work or what I made it for. If you just open yourself, you’ll feel something and that would be the most wonderful thing if they would do that.”

Coyne has been the subject of more than 30 solo museum exhibitions and her work is held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York), Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (San Francisco), the Chazen and many others.

Earlier this year, Coyne received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center, and in November will be honored by the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Additional awards include those from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, three from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, New York Foundation for the Arts, Anonymous Was A Woman, Augustus Saint-Gaudens Memorial Foundation, three from Artists Space, the Art Matters Award, two International Association of Art Critics Awards and the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art Award in the Visual Arts.

Born in Oklahoma City in 1953, Coyne’s military family allowed her to delve deeply into other cultures through travel and study, with a particular interest in Japan and China. She currently lives in New York City.

The exhibition was curated by Amy Gilman, director of the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A catalogue was produced and will allow for a wide range of curriculum-inspired public programming and school engagement. Additionally, the exhibition will travel to the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami and the Neuberger Museum of Art at Purchase College, State University of New York.

 

Image: detail of Untitled #1378 (Zelda Fitzgerald), 1997-2013
Specially-formulated wax, pigment, silk flowers, candles, paint, white pearl-headed hat pins, ar3ficial pearl strands, cast-wax statuary figure, cast-wax hand sculptures, ribbon, knittng needles, steel rods, chicken-wire fencing, washers, fabric, thread, wire, horse hair, Masonite, plywood, drywall, plaster, glue, filament, rubber, steel, wood and metal screws, maple, laminated Luxar®, 81 3/16 x 35 3/4 x 35 3/4 in., Joen Greenwood Endowment Fund purchase,  2018.39a-b

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