RICHMOND, VA.- Processes & Permutations: Prints by Leonardo Drew is on view August 23 through December 8, 2017, in the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art, Modlin Center Booth Lobby. Leonardo Drew (born 1961) is an African American contemporary artist who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He is known for his large-scale sculptural installations, massive accumulations of what appear to be found objects. In reality, his sculptures are made mostly of new materials — such as wood, rusted iron, cotton, paper, and mud ― that he intentionally subjects to processes of weathering, burning, oxidization, and decay. Jutting out from a wall or freestanding room-size installations, his works evoke the detritus of urban living and the cyclical nature of existence.
The works on view demonstrate the artist’s similar approach to process, experimentation, and materiality in the making of prints. Each work in the series is the result of a complex exploration of printmaking processes coupled with permutations of layering and the juxtaposing of diptych plates. The print CPP8 uses a flat bite toner transfer with soft ground etching printed in graphite ink on black gampi paper chine collé, while the other three prints incorporate hard ground etching modified by a crackle technique using egg white and gum arabic painted on the plate by the artist and allowed to constrict and crackle in unusual patterns by heating the plate.
Organized by the
University of Richmond Museums and curated by Richard Waller, Executive Director, University Museums, the exhibition is made possible in part with funds from the Louis S. Booth Arts Fund.
Annual Student Exhibition is on view August 23 through September 20, 2017, in the Joel and Lila Harnett Museum of Art. Selected by the studio art faculty, this exhibition features works by visual media and arts practice majors and minors along with non-majors enrolled in beginning through advanced studio art classes during the University’s 2016-2017 academic year.
Organized by the University of Richmond Museums in collaboration with the Department of Art and Art History, and coordinated by Richard Waller, Executive Director, University Museums. The exhibition is made possible in part with funds from the Louis S. Booth Arts Fund.
The Personal is Political: Images of Women from the Harnett Print Study Center Collection is on view from August 23, 2017, to July 2, 2018, in the Atrium of the Modlin Center for the Arts. The inspiration for this exhibition is Carol Hanisch’s brief but highly influential 1969 essay “The Personal is Political.” Hanisch originally drafted her essay to emphasize the importance of consciousness-raising groups that met in the 1960s and were being criticized as “therapy” sessions. She argued that these meetings were forms of political action. To Hanisch, everything from equal pay for equal work to sexual harassment to unequal sharing of housework and child rearing among spouses related to the problematic subordination of women in contemporary American society.
The prints in this exhibition depict women either enacting or struggling against “roles” defined by society. The women in these images are sexualized objects, frumpy matrons, idealized leaders, dreamy-eyed protagonists, romantic partners, or highly aggressive provocateurs. Some of the artworks were created by women and others by men, but all feature highly-stylized representations, building on art historical traditions of portraiture and figure studies. Highlighted artists include Rosalyn Drexler (American, born 1926), Reginald Marsh (American, 1898-1954), and Andy Warhol (American, 1928-1987).
The exhibition is on view in the Modlin Center Atrium in the Modlin Center for the Arts, open from 9:00am to 5:00pm, Monday through Friday, and during events.
Organized by the University of Richmond Museums in conjunction with the 2017-2018 Tucker-Boatwright Festival of Literature and the Arts presented by the Department of Theatre and Dance, the exhibition was curated by N. Elizabeth Schlatter, Deputy Director and Curator of Exhibitions, University Museums. All of the artworks in the exhibition are from the permanent collection of the Joel and Lila Harnett Print Study Center, University Museums.
