BROOKLYN, N.Y.- A major series of five ten-week-long exhibitions of works by emerging Brooklyn artists will be presented at the Brooklyn Museum from September 2011 through September 2012. The project, Raw/Cooked launched on September 16 with an exhibition of the work of Bushwick-based artist Kristof Wickman that will be on view through November 27, 2011. Candidate artists were recommended by an advisory board of leading Brooklyn artists and the five to be shown will be selected by Eugenie Tsai, the John and Barbara Vogelstein Curator of Contemporary Art at the Brooklyn Museum. The Museum offers the selected artists a variety of unconventional spaces that make possible a wide range of art interventions. Artists can create projects that respond to the unique architecture or history of the building and/or its collections.

The members of the advisory board are the artists Ron Gorchov, Michael Joo, Paul Ramirez Jonas, Amy Sillman, and Mickalene Thomas, who have each proposed three promising artists for this unique series at the Museum, from which Dr. Tsai made the final selection following studio visits to all the candidates. To be considered for this project an artist may not have gallery representation or have participated in a major museum exhibition. The works considered may be in any medium.

“Raw/Cooked represents heightened commitment by the Brooklyn Museum to its long history of nurturing and exhibiting Brooklyn-based artists,” states Museum Director Arnold L. Lehman. “We are extremely grateful to Bloomberg for working with the Museum to conceptualize this program and provide critical support in making possible this groundbreaking project for us and for our community of artists.”

“The artistic community in New York is so rich and diverse. Many talented up-and-coming artists rarely have an opportunity for a major museum show. Raw/Cooked spotlights the burgeoning Brooklyn art scene through a premier platform that will give Brooklyn artists, selected by their peers, increased exposure and recognition,” said Lex Fenwick, CEO, Bloomberg Ventures.

Kristof Wickman, recommended by Paul Ramirez Jonas, is an object maker and a skilled builder and materials manipulator. He makes casts of everyday objects, often intertwining them with the human body in unusual, and sometimes humorous, ways. Wickman will be presenting several of these sculptures along with new works he is creating specially for Raw/Cooked. On recent visits to the Museum, he discussed the possibilities of working with objects in the Museum’s collection. His work will be presented in the Mezzanine Gallery, possibly with additional pieces in the front lobby.

The four additional exhibitions, of artists still to be selected, will be on view November 4, 2011–January 19, 2012; January 27–April 8, 2012; April 13–June 24, 2012; and June 29–September 9, 2012.

Raw/Cooked continues the Brooklyn Museum’s long tradition of collecting and presenting work by both upand-coming and established Brooklyn artists including the presentation of the extended series of Working in Brooklyn exhibitions, and continuing with the major survey exhibition Open House, in 2004, which brought together the work of 200 Brooklyn artists.