LINCOLN, NEB.- Sheldon Museum of Art at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln opens five exhibitions that reflect the world today and explore life from diverse perspectives, shedding light on issues including migration and the complexities of lived experience. The exhibitions on view from August 9 through December 31 are:
Unquiet Harmony: The Subject of Displacement
Featuring works by painter Carlos Alfonzo, multimedia artist Tiffany Chung, and the artistic collective SUPERFLEX, “Unquiet Harmony: The Subject of Displacement” focuses on the personal, environmental, and economic factors that prompt migration. Chung and SUPERFLEX posit that finding and arriving at a new home is not always a given, and Alfonzo’s work presents the unquiet harmony of one who continues to feel out of place in a new home.
Chung’s gallery installation is an investigation into human’s fraught relationship with the environment, the destruction that can be wrought on the land, and the resultant displacement of people. Chung references the past and fictionalizes the future in a nonlinear manner, collapsing the distinctions between time and geography to draw parallels between the toll of the 1930s Dust Bowl on the Great Plains and the decline of other small agricultural and industrial towns around the world.
Best known for works that address economic imbalance, SUPERFLEX turns their attention to economics and migration in their 2015 video “Kwassa Kwassa,” which is featured in the exhibition. The work offers a somber meditation on everyday people who risk their lives in search of better opportunities and asks the viewer to reconsider the nature of national identity and the arbitrariness of political borders.
Alfonzo, who emigrated from Cuba to the United States during the Mariel boatlift of 1980, created intensely personal paintings that reveal the traumas he continued to negotiate after having received asylum. His journey from Havana and period of adjustment to the US informed his artistic production, leading to some of his most celebrated paintings.
Convergence on Paper: Printmaking and Photography from Piranesi to Pop
Surveying Sheldon’s collection of works on paper from the late eighteenth to the late twentieth century, “Convergence on Paper” presents selected instances when printmaking and photography are in dialogue with one another. With focus on moments in which the two practices intersect—in terms of function, aesthetics, and technique—the exhibition first highlights the important role the two media played in documenting travel and in shaping American and European perceptions of one another. It then explores the technical and compositional overlaps between the two media, through selected examples of photogravure, cliché-verre, mezzotint, etchings, and photographs.
The exhibition continues with the printmaking renaissance of the 1960s and beyond by first featuring prints by pop artists who incorporate found photographs into the printmaking process, before concluding with prints by photorealists who explored the formal building blocks of photography in their prints. The natural affinity printmaking and photography have for one another is demonstrated by the rewarding results of experimentation and innovation by artists including Vija Celmins, Audrey Flack, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, and James McNeill Whistler.
In Conversation: Black
Throughout history, the color black has evoked powerful and paradoxical connotations. As a hue that absorbs all light, it is not only the archetypal color of death, hell, sin, evil, and rebellion, but can also represent humility, luxury, monastic virtue, and fecundity. For many, the color is closely associated with the origins of the world; Greek mythology, Christianity, and astrophysics all posit that the world emerged from blackness. With this myriad of meanings, “In Conversation: Black” focuses on literal darkness. The monochromatic paintings, photographs, prints, and sculptures presented here encourage heightened awareness of each object’s essence by inviting viewers to contemplate detail concealed in shadow and revealed in light.
The exhibition includes works by Harry Callahan, Roy DeCarava, John Divola, Adolph Gottlieb, Michelle Grabner, Robert Heinecken, Ray K. Metzker, David Nash, Joyce Pensato, Martin Puryear, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Serra, Devan Shimoyama, Frank Stella, Josef Sudek, Donald Sultan, and Fred Wilson.
Intersecting Identities
Drawn from Sheldon’s permanent collection, “Intersecting Identities” offers a selection of artworks that present the complexities of lived experience, particularly as they are affected by the intersection of race with other facets of identity—such as ethnicity, gender, religion, sexual orientation, and social class.
This exhibition presents selected works by artists who express this multifaceted nature of identity. Of the fourteen artists represented, ten are artists of color, and the rest engage with subjects whose narratives have long been marginalized. “Intersecting Identities” includes works by Laylah Ali, Xenobia Bailey, Rick Bartow, Eugene Buechel, Lalla Essaydi, Rashid Johnson, Kyle Meyer, Roger Shimomura, Yinka Shonibare, James VanDerZee, and Zao Wou-ki.
Sheldon Treasures
In addition to holding objects acquired by the University of Nebraska, the museum stewards a collection assembled by the Sheldon Art Association, founded by community members in 1888 as the Haydon Art Club. Their vision was to establish a museum collection that would support both the education of students at the university and the economic development of the state. Together, the collections now comprise nearly 13,000 original works of art in various media.
Each collection includes unparalleled treasures. Some are masterworks by renowned artists; others are beloved favorites of museum visitors. Many have traveled great distances to be seen in national and international exhibitions. This gallery presents a selection of such objects, a testament to the wisdom and foresight of Sheldon’s founders, leaders, and advocates who have assembled these works for the benefit of future generations.
Through December 31, 2019, “Sheldon Treasures” features works by George Ault, Louise Bourgeois, Elizabeth Catlett, Stuart Davis, Arthur Dove, Perle Fine, O. Louis Guglielmi, Barnett Newman, Maurice Prendergast, Norman Rockwell, Mark Rothko, Kay Sage, and Stanley Whitney.
