The Official Blog of the Allen Memorial Art Museum

"Pride and Glory": Plain Dealer article on the MOCA Cleveland exhibition

4pm

Renovation Update - Green Edition

The museum’s renovation project has begun on the north side of the Cass Gilbert building with the excavation of the north lawn to accommodate an 18-well geothermal field.

The geothermal well system will optimize energy performance for the museum and significantly reduce carbon emissions. In addition to geothermal, the project includes water efficient landscaping; water use reduction; recycling of construction materials; and use of recycled and regional materials.

Click here to listen to our renovation podcasts, including lead architect Sam Anderson’s discussion about the project’s sustainability efforts.

After the project is completed, Robert Morris’s expanded aluminum sculpture, Untitled (1969), will be reinstalled over the geothermal well field.

11am

Exhibition Opening! Tonight!

When the Allen Memorial Art Museum closed on December 23, 2009, to undergo a sixteen-month renovation project, works from its permanent collection were loaned to regional and national museum in an effort to allow new audiences to see and enjoy them in new contexts and settings.

Tonight, the exhibition “From Then to Now: Masterworks of Contemporary African-American Art” opens at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) Cleveland featuring thirteen objects by ten artists from the AMAM collection. Artists represented include: Romare Bearden, Willie Cole, Faith Ringgold, Renee Green, and Leonardo Drew. This show highlights the important holdings of African-American art in the AMAM collection, and places them in context with other crucial works from northeast Ohio institutions. As the MOCA Cleveland website states, these artists’ “universal search for meaning in facing the past and confronting the challenges of the present binds these works together in what ultimately represents a celebration of and triumph of the creative spirit.”

An opening night party will be held this evening from 7pm until 10pm. This celebration is free and open to the public.

9am

REALLY explore Renaissance Italy. Fight People.

A fantastic article on the scope and detail of the video game “Assassin’s Creed II,” which prompted two thoughts: 1) new work opportunities for Art History majors! and 2) how long could it be until they develop a MMOG that allows a user to explore several historical recreations of cities from across a whole continent? If there are already three Italian Renaissance cities mapped, then surely Paris, Madrid, etc. could be added? Or a program allowing a user to virtually travel the ancient Christian pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela could be created?

11am

Happy Birthday, Paul Cézanne!

On January 19, 1839, Paul Cézanne was born in the town of Aix-en-Provence, in the south of France. Leaving his studies early, Cézanne moved to Paris in 1861 and began to paint with Camille Pissarro. Consistently rejected by both the Paris Salon and various art schools, Cézanne returned to the south of France in 1870, thus also avoiding conscription in the war with Prussia. There he began to study nature and to experiment with landscape painting. By 1872, Cézanne was again working closely with Pissarro before participating in the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874. Cézanne’s paintings were singled out for particularly harsh criticism by the French press. However, by the late 1890s, his paintings began to be noticed by younger artists and he is now considered one of the masters of 19^th century painting and his work was extremely influential on many artists of the 20^th century. (Read more).

Cézanne’s Viaduct at l’Estaque (Le Viaduct à l’Estaque) from 1882 has been a highlight of the AMAM’s collection since it was acquired in 1950. This painting is part of a group of twenty works that will be lent to the Metropolitan Museum of Art during the AMAM’s renovation project. In this podcast, Oberlin College Professor of Neuroscience Mark Braford discusses the AMAM’s Cézanne painting as an analogy to the way scientists now believe the optical system works.

Cézanne painted at least one other view of the viaduct at l’Estaque that dates between 1879 and 1882, Le Viaduct à l’Estaque in Helsinki. The facture of that painting includes much of the diagonal stroke that characterized Cézanne’s work shortly before the moment of the Oberlin canvas.

10am

It has begun.

2pm

The Last Podcast of the Week! The last podcast of 2009!

Today, we focus on another aspect of the AMAM’s strong collection - the numerous Japanese woodblock prints donated to the museum by Mary A. Ainsworth. Several of these works were on display during the 2008-09 academic year in the exhibition ‘Envisioning Edo’s Splendor: “The Floating World” and Beyond.’ Here, Oberlin College students Matt Gin and Amanda Tobin discuss ukiyo-e prints and the culture of the Edo Period.

A small selection of Japanese woodblock prints is on view in the current exhibition, “Starry Dome” - and you still have a couple more days to check it out before the museum closes for its renovation!

Happy Holidays! Check back to the AMAM blog in 2010 for more podcasts, updates on the museum’s renovation project, and information about public programs!

10am

Today we continue our “Podcast of the Week” series with a discussion between two great Oberlin College professors about a great work from the AMAM collection.

Nick Jones, Professor of English, and Peter Swendsen, Assistant Professor of TIMARA, talk about how they used the work “Dovedale by Moonlight” in their course “Landscapes, Soundscapes, Wordscapes.”

This discussion exemplifies the use of the museum’s collection within the college curriculum. Likewise, “Dovedale by Moonlight” is currently featured in the exhibition “Starry Dome: Astronomy in Art and the Imagination,” which supported the Oberlin College course “Introductory Astronomy,” as well as the International Baccalaureate unit “Where We Are in Space and Time” in the K-5 curriculum in the Oberlin City Schools.

“Starry Dome” runs through Wednesday, December 23 (as does the museum!).

3pm

Great Plain Dealer article on upcoming AMAM projects

The article (linked to above) ran in Sunday’s Plain Dealer. It’s a great summary of the renovation project and exhibition loans that will carry us through the close down period. Enjoy!

10am

Ted Bower (1922-2009)

Ted Bower, an apprentice to Frank Lloyd Wright who supervised the construction of the Weltzheimer/Johnson House,  has died. He was 87.

Bower studied at Taliesin, Wright’s summer home and studio space, principally during the Second World War. In 1948, he left Taliesin to come to Oberlin and work on the construction of the Charles Weltzheimer residence – one of the several homes designed by Wright in his “Usonian” style.

(Image: from left: Ted Bower, Robert Chuckrow, Wright, unidentified, Aaron Resnick, David Henken, Sol Friedman)

Bower’s influence on the house can be seen in the unique design of the clerestory windows. This design exhibits strong curvilinear features, in contrast to the overall rectilinear design of the house and indeed Usonian homes in general. After Bower’s work on the house, he continued on to work at the Usonia Homes planned community near Pleasantville, New York, and later began his own practice.

For a discussion of Bower’ time and work while at Wright’s studio, please click here. A more complete obituary can be found here.

4pm