Chicago-based artist Diane Simpson presented elegantly constructed, architectural sculptures in her first major museum exhibition (at the age of 80).
(Boston, MA, Dec. 10, 2015)—The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) has added 20 major works of 20th- and 21st-century art to The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women, today announced Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA. This exceptional gift by Barbara Lee, Vice-Chair of the ICA Board, furthers the ICA’s commitment to building a collection of art that addresses the systemic underrepresentation of woman artists in museum collections.
The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women, established at the ICA in 2014, represents three decades of collecting by Lee and brings together painting, sculpture, photography, and videography by iconic modern and contemporary women artists.
Highlights of Lee’s most recent gift include Louise Bourgeois’s tour-de-force sculptural work Cell (Hands and Mirror) (1995); two critically important sculptures by Eva Hesse, Ennead (1966) and Accession IV (1968); Sherrie Levine’s iconic 1996 sculpture Fountain (Buddha); Ellen Gallagher’s suite of 60 prints DeLuxe (2004-05); and a monumental, room-size installation by Kara Walker titled The Nigger Huck Finn Pursues Happiness Beyond the Narrow Constraints of your Overdetermined Thesis on Freedom – Drawn and Quartered by Mister Kara Walkerberry, with Condolences to the Authors (2010).
“Barbara Lee continues to lead by example—her vision and generosity allow the ICA to tell urgent and undertold histories of post-war and contemporary art,” said Jill Medvedow, Ellen Matilda Poss Director of the ICA. “With these new acquisitions, our collection is enriched by some of the most important works of recent art history. The introduction of a major installation by Kara Walker is a hallmark addition to our collection and brings an essential engagement between the work in our galleries and the critical issues of our time. The Eva Hesse sculptures Ennead and Accession IV are rare and exceptional works that, in our galleries, will provide vital context for understanding Hesse’s foundational influence on generations of artists.”
“My gift puts women artists front and center at an institution known for breaking barriers,” said Lee. “The ICA’s vision aligns powerfully with my own. The museum has a spirit of independence, defies expectations, and challenges the status quo—all things that embody my life’s work to empower women.”
Kara Walker’s installation The Nigger Huck Finn…, commissioned for the 2010 exhibition Huckleberry Finn at CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art in San Francisco, is a sweeping installation composed of silhouetted cut-paper figures set on a light brown groundline painted directly on the wall and punctuated by seven framed gouache paintings on paper. To date, only one other wall work by Walker combines these three elements.
“These remarkably generous gifts provide us with an opportunity to continue to build our collection of 20th- and 21st- century art so that our community can enjoy more works by these artists, permanently, furthering the ICA’s mission to expand people’s understanding of art and the salient ideas and issues of our time,” said Eva Respini, Barbara Lee Chief Curator of the ICA.
The complete list of new works added to The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women:
Dara Birnbaum
Kiss the Girls: Make Them Cry, 1979
Two channel video (color, sound; 06:26 minutes), and flight cases
Dimensions variable
Louise Bourgeois
Untitled, BOUR 0913, 1947-49
Wood and paint
25 ¼ x 10 ¼ x 6 ⅝ inches (64.1 x 26 x 16.8 cm)
Louise Bourgeois
Spiral Woman, 1951-52
Wood and steel
62 ½ x 12 x 12 inches (159 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm)
Louise Bourgeois
Spiral Woman, 1984
Bronze and slate
14 x 4 x 5 inches (35.6 x 10.2 x 12.7 cm); Slate disc: 1 ¼ x 34 ¾ inches (3.18 x 88.3 cm)
Louise Bourgeois
Cell (Hands and Mirror), 1995
Marble, metal, and mirror
63 x 48 x 45 inches (160 x 122 x 114 cm)
Carol Bove
Innerspace Bullshit, 2007
Fourteen books, comic book, letter, bronze sculpture, Marfa rock, ocean ephemera, mirror, and pamphlet on wood and metal shelves
42 x 36 ⅛ x 12 inches (107 x 91.8 x 30.5 cm)
Ellen Gallagher
DeLuxe, 2004–05
Photogravure, etching, aquatint, and drypoints with lithography, screenprint, embossing, tattoo-machine engraving, laser cutting, and chine collé; and additions of plasticine, paper collage, enamel, varnish, gouache, pencil, oil, polymer, watercolor, pomade, velvet, glitter, crystals, foil paper, gold leaf, toy eyeballs, and imitation ice cubes
Sixty parts, each 13 ½ x 10 ½ inches (34.3 x 26.7 cm); overall 84 x 176 inches (213 x 447 cm)
Eva Hesse
Ennead, 1966
Dyed string, papier-mâché, and paint
96 x 39 x 17 inches (244 x 99.1 x 43.2 cm)
Eva Hesse
Accession IV, 1968
Galvanized steel and rubber tubing
8 ⅛ x 8 x 8 ¼ inches (20.6 x 20.3 x 21 cm)
Louise Lawler
Grieving Mothers (Attachment), 2005
Silver dye bleach print (Cibachrome)
46 x 41 inches (117 x 104 cm)
Sherrie Levine
After Henri Matisse, 1985
Ink and graphite on paper
13 ⅞ x 10 ⅞ inches (35.2 x 27.6 cm)
Sherrie Levine
Chair Seat: 7, 1986
Casein on wood
18 x 18 x 2 ¼ inches (45.7 x 45.7 x 5.72 cm)
Sherrie Levine
Untitled (Gold Knot: 6), 1987
Oil on wood
62 ½ x 50 ¼ inches (159 x 128 cm)
Sherrie Levine
Fountain (Buddha), 1996
Bronze
12 x 17 x 16 inches (30.5 x 43.2 x 40.6 cm)
Marisol
Couple No 1, 1965-66
Wood, paint, fabric, electric motor, and mixed media
71 x 34 x 26 7/16 inches (180 x 86.4 x 67.2 cm)
Alice Neel
Vera Beckerhoff, 1972
Oil on canvas
60 x 32 inches (152 x 81.3 cm)
Alice Neel
Margaret Evans Pregnant, 1978
Oil on canvas
57 ¾ x 38 inches (147 x 96.5 cm)
Cady Noland
Untitled, 1989
Screenprint on aluminum
72 x 48 inches (183 x 122 cm)
Charline von Heyl
Untitled, 2003
Mixed media on paper
Ten parts, each 23 ⅞ x 18 ⅞ inches (60.6 x 47.9 cm)
Kara Walker
The Nigger Huck Finn Pursues Happiness Beyond the Narrow Constraints of your Overdetermined Thesis on Freedom — Drawn and Quartered by Mister Kara Walkerberry, with Condolences to The Authors, 2010
Cut paper and paint on wall and gouache and ink on paper
Approximately 57 feet
16 cut paper elements, dimensions variable; 7 framed works on paper, each 11 ½ x 15 inches (29.2 x 38.1 cm)
The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women
The Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women represents three decades of collecting by philanthropist and political activist Barbara Lee. It brings together painting, sculpture, and photography by iconic modern and contemporary artists. Ranging from portraiture to performance, abstraction and representation, conceptual and craft-based work, the art in the Collection presents personal and political explorations of identity; feminism; materiality; and the body as the site of pleasure, violence, repression and expression. Artists represented in the Collection include Louise Bourgeois, Tara Donovan, Marlene Dumas, Mona Hatoum, Cindy Sherman, and Lorna Simpson, and adds groundbreaking works by artists who are part of the ICA’s exhibition history including Sandra Cinto, Rachel Harrison, Eva Hesse, Jenny Holzer, Roni Horn, Louise Lawler, Ana Mendieta, Doris Salcedo, Joan Semmel, Amy Sillman, Kiki Smith, Shelburne Thurber, and Lisa Yuskavage.
In the largest gift ever made to the museum, trustee Barbara Lee donates 20 works by 12 artists to become part of the Barbara Lee Collection of Art by Women including a room-sized installation by Kara Walker exploring the legend of Huckleberry Finn, as well as works by Louise Bourgeois, Carol Bove, Ellen Gallagher, Eva Hesse, and Sherrie Levine.
Ethan Murrow: Seastead.
Installation detail, Ethan Murrow: Seastead, 2015. The Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall, The INstitute of Contemporary Art/Boston, July 2015–November 2016. Photo by Charles Mayer.
Photo by Liza Voll.
A new book brings together the artist’s fantastical drawings on paper and walls.
Monumental as it is, Ethan Murrow’s drawing Seastead on the Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall at the ICA is only one small part of the Boston-based artist’s output. A new book, Ethan Murrow (Hatje Cantz) gathers dozens of his works, presenting for the first time in print his large-scale wall drawings in ballpoint pen alongside those he executes on paper. Murrow’s work, photorealist but fantastical, examines the boundaries between fiction and depicted reality while telling stories of the artist’s creation.
Ruth Erickson, Assistant Curator at the ICA and organizer Seastead, contributed texts to the book, available at the ICA Store. Read an excerpt below.
The landscape around the ICA seems to be in a state of constant change. New buildings appear over night, while historical structures, like the brick sailor’s church, Our Lady of Good Hope, disappear just as quickly. This dramatic architectural transformation of the Seaport District (what has already taken place and what is planned for the near future) is only echoed in the watery depths of the adjoining Boston Harbor. While the sea’s steady tides might suggest a sense of timelessness—the retreat and return with each moon cycle—the natural harbor links to a vast network of waterways, bodies, and commerce undergoing significant alterations. The harbor becomes a kind of marker of the many ways that environmental changes, from rising sea levels to diminished fishing stocks, reshape, and will increasingly reshape, human existence on the earth. It is with these thoughts in mind that I invited Murrow to create a wall drawing for the ICA’s Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall.
Murrow based his drawing of the large boat on American aircraft carriers, the impressive nautical devices that have been central to the nation’s military prowess. Perched on top of the carrier, Murrow has drawn St. Paul’s Cathedral, which was constructed in London after the great fire in 1666 and withstood the Blitz bombing of World War II. Sourcing images from the Internet, Murrow created a digital mock-up, marrying the carrier and the cathedral in the middle of the sea, and then set out with three assistants to draw it, by hand and in marker directly on the wall over the course of ten days. This formidable task, which took almost 100 hours and exhausted over 400 Sharpie pens, embodied a remarkable commitment and expenditure of raw energy, an effort that resonated with the subject matter.
Structures of immense physical strength, the carrier and cathedral are symbolic of the nations that created them—not coincidentally, the same great powers of Boston’s own Puritan origins—but in Seastead, they appear somewhat tenuous. Is this a rebellious breakaway, a forced exile, or a utopian endeavor? What triggered it? Insurgent political regimes, rising sea levels? The work’s title, Seastead, is derived from “seasteading” (a combination of the words “sea” and “homesteading”), which refers to the creation of an island state outside of the boundaries and the laws of any sovereign nation. If taken at face value, the title and imagery may conjure a break-up of the great Western powers and the formation of a new entity in its nascent stage of assembly, an apt characterization of the twenty-first century. Such a process is replicated in the individual marks that begin as countless crosshatches by a team of hands and then cohere at a distance into a photorealistic drawing only to dissolve into thousands of indeterminable marks upon scrutiny. Murrow holds together these opposing processes, allowing formation and disintegration to coexist in both the narrative arc and drawing. Seastead is neither a beginning nor an ending but rather both at once, capturing the resilience of the one and the many working together.
On April 13, 2016, The Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston (ICA) opens an exhibition focusing on the recent paper works of artist Geoffrey Farmer (b. 1967, Vancouver). Farmer is known for the epic scale and scope of his projects that are often developed over extended periods of time and remain in ongoing states of transformation. As part of the exhibition along with his recent paper works, a new major film work will be presented: a computer controlled montage of thousands of images rescued from a discarded clipping library. Organized by Dan Byers, Mannion Family Senior Curator, Geoffrey Farmer is on view through July 17, 2016.
In Farmer’s recent works, processions of figures assembled from fragments of book and magazine photography and illustration manifest the artist’s interest in the cross-pollination of historical and vernacular imagery. Each spectacular composition begins to chart the historical contours of our image-saturated contemporary culture, and suggest the recurring cultural themes and formal patterns. Farmer uses movement, sound, animation, puppet characters, and a panoply of highly choreographed bodies and characters to investigate world history from the different angles of its photographic and sculptural accounts.
Three large-scale works create the foundation for the exhibition. Boneyard (2013) uses photographs as a sculptural material, and it most directly addresses the relationship between photography and the history of sculpture. Boneyard is comprised of over 1,200 photographs of sculptures removed from an Italian sculptural history folio, ranging from 10 AD to the 1970s. Farmer deploys each exactingly incised figure in the round, creating unexpected historical and thematic groupings and perspectives. The genres of Western art history, and their attendant cultural influences, march by, creating both a condensed and exploded view into the physical, material expressions of history and their photographic reproduction.
The Surgeon and the Photographer (2009-13) is comprised of 365 handmade figures, each a highly individual assemblage made from photographs and fabric. When Farmer heard that an important used bookstore in his native Vancouver would be going out of business, he bought hundreds of books from their inventory. Considering the relationship between the book, and the hand, he devised an installation of hundreds of hand puppet-like figures fabricated from the inventory of images culled from the purchased books. Presented in clusters resembling social groupings, the figures evoke strange processions and gatherings, and the almost magical aura of photography in the 20th century.
Finally, Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell (2013) is a hypnotic computer-generated projected montage of over 15,000 images originally comprised of part of a rescued clipping library and now expanded to incorporate photographic archives for this constantly changing, expanding film. Combined with an archive of sounds, this spell-binding work offers a trans-historical, trans-cultural trip through the world as captured by photographs in the last hundred and fifty years. Each image and sound is tagged with various categories that the computer program brings together different sequences of affinity every time it’s shown. The “movie” is never the same. In many ways, Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell, gets to the heart of Farmer’s animation and re-presentation of history through its photographic record, the driving forces in this recent body of work.
A full-color exhibition publication, designed by graphic designer Chad Kloepfer in close collaboration with the artist, will take a non-traditional form, inspired by the assembled paper works.
About Geoffrey Farmer
Geoffrey Farmer was born in 1967 in Vancouver, Canada, where he continues to live and work. He studied at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. US solo exhibitions include two shows with Casey Kaplan, New York (2011, 2014), and the recent presentation of a single large scale-work, Let’s Make the Water Turn Black, at Perez Art Museum Miami (2014), (also presented at Migros Museum, Zurich; Nottingham Contemporary; and Kunstverein, Hamburg), as well as exhibitions at REDCAT in LA (2011, the first showing of Let’s Make the Water Turn Black); and Western Bridge, Seattle (2010). Farmer has had multiple solo shows in Canada; In addition to his 2015 mid-career survey How Do I Fit This Ghost In My Mouth? at the Vancouver Art Gallery, he has exhibited the Art Gallery of Ontario (2014); Mercer Union, Toronto (2013); the Banff Center, Banff (2010); National Gallery of Canada Ottawa (2009); Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal (2009) and Contemporary Art Gallery of Vancouver (2002). European Solo Exhibitions have taken place at The Barbican, London (2013); Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2011); Witte de With, Rotterdam (2008); the Tate Modern, London (2007); as well as an important contribution to dOCUMENTA (13) Kassel, Germany (2012).