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.

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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.

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.

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 Times, Artforum, Frieze, Mousse, 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 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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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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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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Now available in the Chazen Café: Nordic Utopia?: African Americans in the Twentieth Century by Ethelene Whitmire, Temi Odumosu, Ryan Thomas Skinner, Leslie Anne Anderson (Editor).

Nordic Utopia? assembles drawings, paintings, photographs, textiles, film, music and dance to explore the ways in which travel impacted some African Americans’ visual and performance art. New scholarship chronicles the experiences of singers Josephine Baker and Anne Wiggins Brown; jazz tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon; dancer and choreographer Doug Crutchfield; painters Herbert Gentry, William Henry Johnson and Walter H. Williams; multimedia artist and designer Howard Smith and others. The objects on view offer insight into their lives, the social climates in which they worked and the reasons they relocated.

“Some artists left the United States on an intentional quest for refuge from racial prejudice and other social constraints. Others found creative freedom in Nordic countries that catapulted their artistic practice,” said exhibition co-curator Ethelene Whitmire a professor in the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Department of African American Studies.

Leslie Anne Anderson, chief curator of the National Nordic Museum, adds, “The stories of African American creatives, journalists and scholars are told through iconic and rarely seen examples of their work held in public and private collections. These objects are brought into a transmedial dialogue with each other that conveys lively cultural exchange.”

Danish photographer Kirsten Malone has long captured Denmark’s jazz scene and documented the journeys of several African American artists during their time abroad. Malone’s Dexter Gordon at Jazzhus Montmartre in Copenhagen, Denmark (1964) is among several images of Gordon in the exhibition. The black and white print finds the musician enjoying a quick break during his performance at a club turned musical hub in the Nordic jazz capital. After a successful music career in the United States, Gordon lived in Denmark from 1962–1976.

Kirsten Malone, “A bebop jazz singer. Babs Gonzales in Nyhavn in Copenhagen,” 1968, gelatin silver print from original, Courtesy of Kirsten Malone.

Malone’s A Be-Bop Jazz Singer, Babs Gonzales in Nyhavn in Copenhagen (1968) presents Gonzales in Copenhagen’s Nyhavn entertainment district. Born Lee Brown in Newark, New Jersey, Gonzales split his time between Denmark and Sweden. He also joined the Manhattan Singers in Scandinavia on tour for four months and traveled to Paris. Along with his music, Gonzales self-published several books about some of the struggles Black musicians faced.

Love ultimately drove William Henry Johnson to Scandinavia in the 1930s. The South Carolina native moved to New York as a teen, where he worked several jobs to pay for studies at the National Academy of Design. After reaching acclaim as a talented painter in school, Johnson went to France, where he explored modernism and found love in Danish artist Holcha Krake. The two married and lived in Scandinavia for approximately eight years. There, Johnson developed an affinity for primitivism and folk art that would impact his painting upon his return to New York in 1938. Over his career, he produced thousands of paintings and works on paper that are held in the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s permanent collection.

Expressionist painter Herbert Gentry spent five years immersed in Copenhagen’s jazz scene, where he was surrounded by African American musicians, writers and artists. His mother, a chorus dancer, introduced Gentry to music and theater during the Harlem Renaissance. Gentry pursued visual arts until World War II derailed his studies. His service in the U.S. Army led him to duty stations in North Africa, Corsica, France, Austria and Germany — exposing him to new cultures, people and places. While stationed in a French suburb, Gentry visited Paris often. After returning to New York in 1945 following an honorable discharge, Gentry saved enough money to be among the first wave of GI Bill art students to arrive in Paris in 1946. During his long career, Gentry lived in Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Stockholm and Paris. While in Copenhagen, the dynamic jazz scene greatly influenced his visual arts style, inspiring more improvisation in his abstract works. Then and Now (1964), one of several works by Gentry in the exhibition, bridges the artist’s past and present and hints at what viewers would see in his future works. Gentry returned to New York to live in 1990.

Walter Williams, Sunflowers, n.d., mixed media. Loan courtesy of The Johnson Collection.

Walter H. Williams began traveling to Denmark in 1959 and became a citizen in 1979. He often used nature in his works to represent brighter days for African Americans. During his time in Bornholm, also known as sunshine island, Williams started using sunflowers in his work, as featured in Sunflowers (n.d.) and Southern Landscape (1977-78). Williams studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School and first experienced living abroad after winning a John Hay Whitney fellowship to study in Mexico. There, he was able to perfect his artistic practice without the racial prejudice that loomed in the United States. After remaining in Mexico for four years, he returned home before traveling to Denmark.

The exhibition draws from several private and public collections across the United States and Nordic countries including the National Gallery of Art and Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC; the David C. Driskell Center at the University of Maryland, College Park; Moderna Museet in Stockholm and SMK—the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen.

Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century is co-curated by Ethelene Whitmire, a professor in the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Department of African American Studies, and Leslie Anne Anderson, chief curator at the National Nordic Museum. The exhibition is organized by the National Nordic Museum, Seattle. A fully illustrated catalogue co-edited by Whitmire and Anderson will accompany the exhibition and feature essays by Temi Odumosu, PhD (University of Washington) and Ryan T. Skinner, PhD (Ohio State University).

Support

The national tour has been made possible through generous support from The Terra Foundation for American Art, Laurie C. Black, Nordic Kulturfond, Globus Grant, Microsoft, City of Seattle, Hugh and Jane Ferguson Foundation, and ArtsFund Guendolen Carkeek Plestcheef Fund for Decorative and Design Arts.

At the Chazen Museum of Art, this exhibition is also supported by the Brittingham Trust, the Anonymous Trust Fund, and the Wisconsin Arts Board.

About the Curators

Ethelene Whitmire is a professor in the Department of African American Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Whitmire was a Fulbright scholar and a visiting professor at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Transnational American Studies in 2016–2017. She has received additional fellowships from the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the Lois Roth Endowment.

Leslie Anne Anderson is chief curator of the National Nordic Museum and a Seattle Arts commissioner. She has been an American-Scandinavian Foundation fellow and a Fulbright scholar at the University of Copenhagen. Anderson has organized over 20 exhibitions, including the celebrated collection reinstallation American and Regional Art: Mythmaking and Truth-Telling at the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, and she was the commissioning curator of Jónsi: FLÓÐ for the National Nordic Museum. She has received the international Association of Art Museum Curators Award for Excellence in Exhibition and the Utah Museums Association Award for Excellence.

About the National Nordic Museum

The National Nordic Museum is the only museum in the United States that showcases the impact and influence of Nordic values and innovation in contemporary society and tells the story of 12,000 years of Nordic history and culture across all five Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) as well as three autonomous regions (Greenland, the Faroe Islands, and Åland) and the cultural region of Sápmi. Awarded a national designation by an Act of Congress in 2019, the Museum shares Nordic culture with people of all ages and backgrounds through exhibitions, a collection of 80,000 objects, unique educational and cultural experiences and by serving as a community gathering place.The National Nordic Museum collaborates with institutions in the Nordic countries to present world-class exhibitions. Recent and current exhibition partners include: Ateneum Art Museum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki; Nationalmuseum, Stockholm; Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo; and Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.

For more information, visit: www.nordicmuseum.org.

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My mother is a horse. presents paintings, silicone surfaces, prints and sculpture in an exploration of how images and objects serve as catalysts of identity formation. Birk emphasizes t4t (trans for trans), the vital network of transgender solidarity and mutual aid, in an examination of embodiment and relationships. With references to organizing structures such as the grid, minimalist sculpture and queer politics, Birk presents connections between material objects and intangible social networks.

Gemini, July 2023 Oil, acrylic, netting on panel with cast Rebound 25 silicone surface, 10 x 8 in. each

In the installation, Birk uses abstraction in part to symbolize changing human bodies. With repetition, vivid color and malleable materials such as thick paint, molded beeswax and cast silicone, Birk reshapes, combines and mutates images as a metaphor for sculpting oneself. The artist also considers variations on object surface and the parallels in how bodies are presented to the world. Drawing inspiration from trans literature, romantic encounters and horse girl memes, Birk credits these images as playing an important part of forming their own transgender identity.

“Seeing myself in these images changes how I understand my embodiment and expands the web of relationships that forms my identity,” said Birk. “These relationships are a source of strength and comfort. I coat the surface of my body with these images like a protective membrane.”

The centerpiece of the exhibition is a full wall featuring more than 200 silicone cast works. Based on three 11” x 14” paintings, each has been cast 69 times creating multiple yet unique versions of the originals. Birk’s experimental approach with duplication recontextualizes the hierarchical relationship between copy and original. With a focus on intimacy and reciprocity, Birk’s references to the mutable and imperfect casting process speak to elements of ambiguity, surprise and beauty in nature.

“Weaving webs between image, self and community, I want this exhibition to transform my images into an emotional support t4t network,” said Birk.

destroy me, April 2024 (detail)
207 Rebound 25 silicone tiles cast from the surfaces of three paintings, upholstery tacks,
magnets, miniature pony figurines, 102 x 328 in.

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 Kelly Kivland, director and lead curator of Michigan Central. Prior to Michigan Central, Kivland served as chief curator and director of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio and curator with Dia Art Foundation in New York. She holds a bachelor’s degree from UW–Madison and a master’s degree from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.

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Beginning his affiliation with the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1951 as head of ceramics, Littleton organized the seminal 1962 Toledo Museum of Art workshops that enabled artist-craftsmen in ceramics to explore glass. Shortly thereafter, on UW–Madison’s campus he established America’s first university-level, hot glass program.

Until Littleton’s intervention, except for a few forerunners, glass was used primarily in factories for functional wares. Littleton’s approach eliminated the rift between designer and fabricator that invariably plagued production in these shop settings over the centuries while empowering artists to work with glass within the confines of their studios. During the early years of studio glass, in their respective ways, artists in the Chazen’s personal collection—such as American artist Dale Chihuly, Czech artists Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová, and Italian artist Lino Tagliepietra—demonstrated the necessity for collaboration and teamwork. Other artists, such as Howard Ben Tré and Bertil Vallien, incorporated specific resources from particular glass factories into their own studio practices. Littleton’s call for glass artists to de-emphasize technique in favor of content was heard internationally. American Michael Aschenbrenner and Australian Scott Chaseling address topical issues from the last decade of the twentieth century in their works. Concept and narrative are now central to glass art.  In addition, the demographics of glassmaking have changed over the years. Pioneers such as Mary Shaffer, Toots Zynsky, and Therman Statom have paved the way for women and people of color in the contemporary glass field.   In these and many other ways, Littleton’s Legacy:  The Simona and Jerome Chazen Collection of Studio Glass is a persuasive testament to the far-reaching vision of Harvey K. Littleton.

Look What Harvey Did is guest-curated by Davira S. Taragin for the Chazen Museum of Art.

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This small selection reflects the diversity of artwork that has been added to the collection in recent years. Once an artwork joins the museum’s collection, staff act as stewards, making sure that artworks are well preserved and accessible for viewing by appointment in the Chazen’s study rooms, through the museum’s online database, and in gallery installations and temporary exhibitions like this one.

This iteration of the Chazen’s Recent Acquisitions exhibition highlights donors and artists with connections to the University of Wisconsin–Madison in celebration of the University’s 175th anniversary.

Above: Dale Chihuly (American, b. 1941), Korallrot Basket Group, 1979, blown glass, Walter J. and Cecille Hunt Endowment Fund purchase, 2022.32.1a-f

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