In the News - Ackland Art Museum

In an October 14, 2008 article, the Daily Tar Heel highlighted the Ackland lunchtime lecture series Lunch with One:

Jim Ketch lectures students, plays jazz with them, directs them and performs for them.

Today, he’s just going to have lunch with them.

Ketch, along with his colleague, Stephen Anderson from the UNC Department of Music, and several students, will host “Lunch with One: One Work of Art, One Expert, One Hour” today at the Ackland Art Museum.

It will be free for students after registering for a free membership to the museum.

The program, “Jazz Takes a Leap: The Breakthrough Year of 1958,” is presented in conjunction with the museum’s Circa 1958 exhibition, which explores art that emerged around the time of the museum’s opening.

Ketch said it was a period where jazz artists were looking for new avenues of expression.

“It’s an interesting time in which there’s sort of a culmination of two decades of really technical and virtuous advance of the music,” he said.

“It’s kind of the advent of a whole new age of musical exploration.”

Artists, who had previously played music based on set forms, were looking for a more relaxed method of making music in the early 1960s, allowing them to improvise with greater flexibility.

“If you think about the turbulent time of the 1960s, there was just a need to create different approaches to musical expression,” Ketch said.

Ketch and an ensemble will perform pieces that display this monumental shift from set form to free expression, using John Coltrane’s fast-moving chords and Miles Davis’ slow, cool music as examples.

The lecture also will delve into the avant-garde movement, discussing the introduction of jazz without any rules or scales, and listening to the music of Ornette Coleman.

“The mobile jazz and the free jazz allowed us to realize that we could also draw from emotional expressive pallets rather than just harmonic, melodic and rhythmic palettes that had been previously used,” Ketch said.

Nic Brown, director of communications at the Ackland, said he was unsure about how many students would attend the lunch, as Fall Break officially starts a few hours later.

“Hopefully not everybody will have left for Fall Break yet,” Brown said.

Despite the uncertainty of student attendance, the museum plans on hosting the lunch, using it to fulfil its duty of relating visual art to the entire campus.

“‘Lunch with One’ is a way for us to bring people into the museum to have a connection in the museum other than just looking at art by yourself,” Brown said. “It’s important for us to incorporate the visual arts into the life of the whole University.”

By getting the music department involved in the Circa 1958 series, Brown said students are given a chance to explore more than just visual art at the Ackland.

“It’s a great chance to eat lunch in an art museum and hear from some of the best experts anywhere,” Brown said.

Ackland celebrates 50 years

On Sept. 20, 1958, the first visitors were welcomes into the new William Hayes Ackland Memorial Art Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel-Hill. The Chapel-Hill Weekly called the center “one of the most modern collegiate art centers in the world.”

In the ceremony, Sloarne announced, “The unique thing is that we have an elegant building and nothing put in it.”

The Ackland had no collection of its own to color the galleries.

Not the Akland Art Museum’s collection has blossomed from zero to more than 15,000 works. A public celebration of the 50th anniversary was held on Sunday, Sept. 21. To continue the occasion, the exhibition “Circa 1958: Breaking Ground in American Art” runs through January 4, 2009.

The exhibition explores in depth the moment American artists first departed from Abstract Expressionism to explore new trends that helped define the last half of the 20th century in more than 55 works.

Ackland Museum marks 50 years

September 21, 2008

CHAPEL HILL–UNC’s Ackland Art Museum is celebrating a big birthday this weekend.

On Sept. 20, 1958, the million-dollar edifice at the edge of campus on Columbia Street opened with two main goals: to make fine art more available in the South, and to collect the university’s scattered pieces of art under one rook.

Today, the Ackland invites the public to enjoy cupcakes and music, review its history and visit the new landmark exhibit exploring momentous changes that took place in art at the time of the museum’s birth a half century ago.

On September 19, 2008 the Durham Herald Sun featured an article on the “Circa 1958: Breaking Ground in American Art” exhibit, marking the 50th anniversary of the Ackland Art Museum. The article mentions various works included in the exhibit as well as praises “Circa 1958″ for expressing multiple reactions to the changing times of the late ’50s.

September 17, 2008

Education outside the classroom is a defining aspect of the UNC experience.

This fall, the Chapel Hill community offers students a number of opportunities to flesh out their educational experiences with a bit of hands­-on learning.

Students should take advantage of these opportunities. Both the Morehead Planetarium and the Ackland Art Museum have excellent programs scheduled that should attract curious students as well as the local community.

On Sunday the Ackland will open a new exhibition: “Circa 1958: Breaking Ground in American Art.” The exhibition brings artistic behemoths Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Claes Oldenburg to our neck of the woods.

The exhibit marks the 50th anniversary of the museum, and celebrates artistic innovations from some of 1958’s most renowned artists.

“Circa 1958” is characterized by change and experimentation — a theme that should resonate with the interests of college students — and includes many works that will challenge our definitions of art.

Part of the exhibition allows visitors to participate in “happenings,” improvisational artistic events involving the spontaneous reaction and participation of audiences.

Morehead Planetarium will also host a number of events including stargazing, public lectures, and unique opportunities to meet distinguished scientists.

“Carolina Skies,” a long-standing and particularly popular Morehead program, offers visitors the opportunity to better understand the night sky.

Live presenters cater to the needs and questions of the audience, bringing the worlds above us down to Earth with a high-tech Star Projector.

As our football program improves and midterm madness approaches, let’s not forget about the community learning opportunities that help make Chapel Hill great.

October 29, 2008

To help enhance the Ackland Art Museum’s fiftieth anniversary, the museum will discuss the literature of a UNC alumnus who has become one of the most popular poets in history.

Today and Thursday, the museum will host its “Art and Literature in the Galleries” event, where fiction and poetry published in 1958 will be discussed. The event comes as part of the Ackland’s “Circa 1958: Breaking Ground in American Art” series.

This week’s literature consists of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s “A Coney Island of the Mind.”

As the ninth installment of the literature series, which started in Jan. 2006, Ferlinghetti’s poetry will diverge from previously discussed poetry.

The discussions are open to the public and consist of roughly 20 people per discussion. They are facilitated by an Ackland educator and one UNC faculty member.

“It’s like the art — it’s breaking new ground,” said Leslie Balkany, Ackland Art Museum educator. “Things were being written that were unlike things written before in America.”

This is not the first time Ferlinghetti’s work has been shown at UNC. Ferlinghetti graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 1941 and also wrote for The Daily Tar Heel.

His collection of poetry, “A Coney Island of the Mind,” is one of the best selling books of poetry ever written, with more than 1 million copies printed.

“Ferlinghetti’s poetry does not follow the standard line and rhythm of traditional poetry,” Balkany said.

Though the connection between art and literature in the late 1950’s may seem abstract, Balkany said many of the artists and writers intercommunicated.

“A lot of the art in the exhibition and Ferlinghetti’s poetry both make very strong social commentaries,” said Hassan Melehy, associate professor of romance languages, who is facilitating the event.

Melehy said during the event, he plans on discussing poetry’s role and social commentary in 1958 through prepared questions.

“The idea is to read the literature and make connections with works of art in the exhibition,” Balkany said. “It is a way to bring art and literature together to see similarities between a visual object and the written word.”

The three-part literature and art series is also the first where the museum will offer two discussion sessions due to the event’s high demand, Balkany said.

“Beat literature has a lot of things to offer students about social commentary and the role of poetry in society and in social activism,” Melehy said.

Both he and Balkany said students would experience the uniqueness of the event.

“This is an opportunity to look and think about things in ways different than how you normally would,” Balkany said. “It broadens your mind.”

ATTEND THE LECTURE
Time: 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. today
Location: Ackland Art Museum
Info: www.ackland.org

Contact the Arts Editor at artsdesk@unc.edu.

On October 17, 2008 the Durham Herald Sun printed an article on the inclusion of music in the Ackland Art Museum’s newest exhibit: “An exhibit now on view at the Ackland Art Museum, ‘Circa 1958: Breaking Ground in American Art,’ explores the transitions that were taking place in visual art 0 years ago, when artists were moving away from Abstract Expressionism to other approaches.”

On October 22, the Chapel Hill Herald published the following editorial wishing the Ackland a happy fiftieth anniversary:

Happy 50th to the Ackland

What a different world it was back in 1958. What a different community we were.

The population, about a tenth of what it is now, was harshly segregated by race. Downtown was the center of a village that didn’t reach much beyond immediate neighborhoods. The University of North Carolina was a provincial campus, not the world-class academic powerhouse it is now.

In fact, to be frank, the entire community was a sleepy little place, without much exposure to the trends and fashions of the outside world that lay outside our borders.

Then the Ackland arrived.

Fifty years ago this fall, the museum at the edge of the university campus brought that outside world to our community. The goal was first to collect the university’s scattered art collection all under one roof and then, more broadly, to make fine art more available in the South.

As the Ackland’s current anniversary exhibition — “Circa 1958: Breaking Ground in American Art” — testifies so well, it was a transitional period, not just in art, but in American life.

We were moving away from the somnambulant 1950s into what would become the turbulent, creative, exploratory, and yes, chaotic, decade of the 1960s.

We were on the launching pad, getting set to explode in a burst of “isms,” artistically, culturally, politically. And the Ackland helped expose us to all that, helped usher all that in around here.

At the same time, it offered us a touchstone, the classical traditions of Rome and Greece and medieval Europe. But perhaps its most signal accomplishment in this community was showing us the radical ideas expressed in the art of 1958. They heralded the radical ideas that were about to be expressed in American culture and politics over the years to come.

Over the 50 years of the museum’s existence, the Ackland has become a pillar of the community, a place where we go to study, learn, bring our children, take classes, entertain ourselves and ponder the mysteries of great art.

The imposing brick building on Columbia Street is one of our crown jewels and we should take immense pride in being a community that can support such an institution.

The Durham Herald Sun

Sep 28, 2008

Kenneth Noland’s concentric circles, 7 x 7 feet, painted in oil on canvas, and John Chamberlain’s sheets of painted steel from automobiles, twisted into pedestal sculpture, mark the art of 1958, the year the Ackland Art Museum opened on UNC’s Chapel Hill canvas.

To celebrate its birthday, the Museum has mounted an exhibition of 62 works o art from 57 artists with objects that date from 1955 to 1963, pinpointing its opening plus or minus a year or two. It is a very important show, with paintings and sculpture that most of us only know from reproductions in books. And it puts into perspective the great ideas of the 20th Century.

Roni Feinstein, 20th Century European and American art expert, guest curator of the show and author of its fine catalogue, sees the moment in time as a transition between the Abstract Expressionists of the early 1950s and Pop Art and Minimalism. On a walk-through with Feinstein, she explained that the artists were coming at art from two directions: either “behind closed doors” (Post-painterly Abstraction) working through the formal qualities of art like line, form and texture; or with doors wide enough (Assemblage) to allow real world things to become the materials of art. Noland’s circles is an example of Post-painterly Abstraction while Chamberlain’s automobile scraps is an Assemblage.

In an exhibition of 20th Century art just after mid-century, the radical ideas that ushered in modernism are already in place and hover over the entire exhibition. Those ideas turned art upside down: One, replace the Renaissance idea of the painting as an extension of the real world with the obvious, that before a picture can be a nude, a horse, or an anecdote it is a flat surface with paint arranged in a certain way. Two, the artist is free to choose any object or material to make a work of art, whether it is paint, newsprint or a manufactured object like a used urinal.

Once the revolution took hold, it was up to the next generations to find all the variations. Noland’s circles is about his investigation of the flat canvas with color; his unprimed canvas allows the paint to seep through the cloth, making a color stain rather than a stroke. Chamberlain’s unchanged automobile junk is all about stuff from the real world becoming material of art.

The spirits of the 20th Century are everywhere in the art. There is Marcel Duchamp reborn in Jasper Johns “Flashlight II,” and Picasso’s collage and printed words in Rauschenberg’s “Painting with Grey Wing” 1959, and Ed Ruscha’s “E.Ruscha” 1959. Robert Morris’ “Box with the sound of its Own Making” could not have been built if John Cage had not created music from ordinary, everyday sounds. Ellsworth Kelly’s “Two Blacks, White and Blue” 1955, responds to Joseph Albers and his studies on color and preceded his own work of a few years later.

While 1958 was a blink in the eye of the history of art, it was a tiny window of transition. Just a few years before, 1958, artists were either abstract expressionists, who threw paint in a frenzy of anxiety, or were color field artists, who carefully used color to express the tragic and timeless. The next generation, these 1958 painters, was beginning to reject all that angst, moving toward a formal thought process that put emotion aside. The sculptors were also replacing the emotion that goes with making a work from scratch by moving outside the traditional materials of art to real-world objects.

Circa 1958 is also about what comes next and from our vantage point of 50 years, we know what is ahead. By the 1960s Andy Warhol had brought the Coca Cola bottle into the museum and Roy Lichtenstein did the same with the comic strip, Allan Kaprow took the world of stuff to its final moment, creating happenings/assemblages that disappeared almost as soon as they were created, and Ed Keinholz used found objects to create bizarre, freaky figures.

Feinstein includes an early Warhol meticulous drawing of a shoe made of gold and silver foil, circa 1956, a 1956 Lichtenstein of the stereotypical cowboy in a rough, cartoonish style and a recreation of Allan Kaprow’s mound of newspapers. Kaprow had made a sculpture of balled up newspapers for a group show in 1959 and when the show was over, the sculpture went into the garbage heap, leaving only a written summary and a photograph. Its recreation gives art a whole new definition.

Looking at the Kienholz allows us to fast forward to last week’s London auction spectacular of Damien Hirst’s work, which includes dead animals encased in great vitrines of formaldehyde. As bizarre as his work is, it would not have been possible without Keinholz’s “John Doe,” a dismantled wood mannequin whose severed body is tied to a child’s perambulator.

Serendipity surrounds the Ackland, its opening date and its location. It is a great story and one you should Google. In 1958, the United States had fought and won a good war, life was calm, people were optimistic and artists had time to investigate their apst.

This show gives us a chance to consider the courage it took to bring about the art revolution of the 20th Century. Thank you to the Ackland for this opportunity to look again at the world of modern art.

-Bill Greenberg

The Daily Tar Heel commemorates the Ackland Art Museum’s 50th anniversary in their September 22, 2008 issue with a profile of the Museum’s newest show, Circa 1958: Breaking Ground in American Art.