Arkansas Arts Center: Eye Candy, Arkansas Times

Takei came, Purple Moon coming to Arts Center

Leslie Newell Peacock — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 10:06:00 -0500

On Saturday, April 20, the San Francisco company Purple Moon Dance Project will perform an interpretive piece in the gallery, "When Dreams are Interrupted" in conjunction with Wendy Maruyama's installation and exhibit on Japanese American internment during World War II, "Tag Project/Executive Order 9066.” The performance will be from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m.

Yesterday, the exhibit had another visitor: George Takei, who portrayed Mr. Sulu on the wildly popular "Star Trek" television series. Takei, who with his family lived at the Rohwer internment camp in South Arkansas for eight months as a child and later at Tule Lake camp in California, is shown in the photograph above posing next to hundreds of internee name tags suspended from the ceiling in Maruyama's installation in the Jeannette Rockefeller Gallery.

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Opening today: "52nd Young Arkansas Artists"

Leslie Newell Peacock — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:27:00 -0500

The annual "Young Arkansas Artists" exhibition of work by students grades K-12 from all over the state opens today at the Arkansas Arts Center. Jurors for the show are members of the Arkansas Art Educators Association; they choose around 125 works from more than 600 entered yearly. Selections from the show will travel the state after the exhibition goes down May 5.

The work above was done by a student at Arkansas High School in Texarkana.

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Delta Grand Prize winner: Mark Lewis

Leslie Newell Peacock — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 12:52:47 -0600

The Arkansas Arts Center announced its "Delta Exhibition" prizes winners last night, and the Grand Award went to Tulsa artist Mark Lewis for his graphite and paper collage "Peoria Avenue No. 7" (2011).

Delta Awards went to Nashville artistWilliam Killebrew for his oil on wood panel "Sun Porch" (2012) and to Russellville artist Neal Harrington for his woodcut and ink wash "Snake Shaker's Shack" (2012).

Little Rock artist Rex Deloney and Skokie, Ill., artist Brandice Guerra won honorable mentions, Deloney for "Self Portrait/The Artist as Teacher" (2012) and Guerra for "Neonate" (2012).

The show runs through March 10.

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AAC in the black

Leslie Newell Peacock — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 13:40:02 -0600

The Arkansas Arts Center put out a press release yesterday crowing about the fact that it has ended the first six months of the fiscal year in the black, and the board of directors' finance committee heard from the Arts Center Deputy Director of Operations Laine Harber that the center has $600,000 in the bank. "The need for caution is not eliminated," Harber said, but the news is good.

The unusual press release might have been a response to an article in November in the Democrat-Gazette that said the Arts Center's revenues weren't keeping up with its budget. The story had some Arts Center folks, sensitive to press about its delicate finances, in a tizzy.

They are tizzing no more, thanks to generous gifts in December (which ended $61,367 ahead of budget) and continued frugality at the Arts Center, which cut administrators pay last year by 7 percent, abandoned in-house marketing (saving the cost of three positions) and, Director Todd Herman said, asked its departments to do more with less. "We are starting to see a turnaround," Herman said.

Some of the $600,000 is restricted to upcoming exhibits, including the "Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London" show that will open June 7.

Arkansas board chair Chucki Bradbury said the report was the best "since Todd Herman arrived."

Still, the development budget of a little more than $1.8 million is only 45 percent of the way toward that figure at the half-way point in the year, due to the reallocation of donations to Tabriz sponsorships, expected gifts budgeted but not yet received, some decline in corporate giving, etc. Giving by individuals is ahead of the game however, at $356,715 toward its goal of $527,590. Tabriz is budgeted to gross $600,000 and net $350,000, of which $200,000 would go to operations and $150,000 to the Arts Center Foundation for art acquisitions. Tabriz dollars met those expectations in both 2009 and 2011.

The board had another thing to brag about: A book on the artist Mark Rothko that includes a forward and introduction by Herman was named the sixth best art book of the year by the Huffington Post. The book, "Mark Rothko: The Decisive Decade 1940-1950," was written to accompany an exhibit that will originate at the Columbia Museum of Art, where Herman was director until his hiring here. (The show was organized by the Arkansas Art Center, the Columbia Museum of Art, the Columbus Museum of Art and the Denver Art Museum, in conjunction with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, and will come here in 2014.)

Herman's role is to set the stage for Rothko's movement into color as content, noting the artists who influenced him, including Titian, Max Weber and Milton Avery. Christopher Rothko, the artist's son; National Gallery curator Harry Cooper, Rothko expert David Anfram and Bradford Collins of the University of South Carolina write the following chapters. How could you not want this book? For more information about it, read here and here; to order from Amazon go here, or better yet, buy it at the Arts Center.

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Gaston Lachaise and more

Leslie Newell Peacock — Fri, 21 Dec 2012 11:40:17 -0600

This week's Artnotes column offers a look at the "44th Collectors Show and Sale," which runs through Sunday, Dec. 30, at the Arkansas Arts Center. I couldn't quite cover all the works on exhibit (all offered for sale by several New York galleries), but I had to include the beautiful Gaston Lachaise drawing. Spend some of your Christmas vacation checking it out, especially if Santa left you a big fat wad of cash in your stocking.

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Opening Friday: Vogels' 50, 'Multiplicity'

Leslie Newell Peacock — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 11:34:14 -0500

The Arkansas Arts Center, which like 49 other art institutions in 49 states received 50 artworks from the collection of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel when the New York couple started giving away their collection in 2008, will exhibit its gift starting tomorrow in an exhibit called "50 for Arkansas."

The Vogels lived in Manhattan and devoted much of their income to buying art from up and coming artists, amassing an enormous collection of contemporary works, largely minimalist and installation pieces; I wrote about them for the printed edition Times recently. The gift — which like the Arts Center's collecting focus consists mostly of works on paper — includes work by William Anastasi, Will Barnet, Robert Barry, Lynda Benglis, Charles Clough, Robert Duran, Richard Francisco, Charles Gaines, Michael Goldberg, Jene Highstein, Martin Johnson, Steve Keister, Mark Kostabi, Michael Lucero, Cheryl Laemmie, Robert Mangold, Richard Nonas, Betty Parsons, Lucio Pozzi, Edda Renouf, Daryl Trivieri, Richard Tuttle and Michael Vinson.

Another exhibition opening Friday at the Arts Center is strong on works on paper: "Muliplicity," where 83 works by such top contemporary artists as John Baldessari, Vija Celmins, Chuck Close, Richard Estes, David Hockney, Sol LeWitt, Kiki Smith and Kara Walker will illustrate the idea of repetition. The exhibition is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, owner of the works.

Both exhibits run through Jan. 6.

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Time to enter the Delta Exhibition

Leslie Newell Peacock — Wed, 22 Aug 2012 12:48:07 -0500

The Arkansas Arts Center has issued a call for entries to its 55th annual Delta Exhibition, to be held Jan. 18-March 10 next year. Deadline to enter is Oct. 30.

The Delta is open to artists who live or were born in Arkansas and its contiguous states. Juror for the show is Monica Bowman, owner of The Butcher's Daughter Contemporary Art Gallery in Detroit and a teacher of business practices for artists at Detroit's College for Creative Studies. She has a blog, Prime Cuts.

Entry fee is $20 for the first entry and $10 for additional entries (up to three allowed).

Guidelines and online entry form are here.

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Tattoo talk standing room only

Leslie Newell Peacock — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 09:23:25 -0500

It might have been the biggest crowd ever to turn out for a lecture at the Arkansas Arts Center, and it was given by a sociologist/kinesiologist from Canada. The subject: The sociology of tattooing. The audience: all over the place, from old ladies like yours truly to the highly tatted and pierced. Dr. Michael Atkinson, the speaker and a professor at McMaster University in Ontario, himself highly decorated, said he'd never spoken before so many kindred spirits and was clearly thrilled.

Before the talk, as the lobby began to fill, a long-time supporter of the Arts Center looked around at the crowd and said, "This is just what the Arts Center needs." Young people, people new to the Arts Center, and lots of them.

Atkinson's talk was lively and funny, but also academic, positing, for example, that tattooing is the last frontier — that because we have no new wide open spaces to explore, we're going inward. His book, “Tattooed: The Sociogenesis of Body Art,” which as his doctoral thesis was titled "Miscreants, Malcontents and Mimesis: Sociogenic and Psychogenic Transformation in the Canadian Tattoo Figuration," a name he was happy to shed, he said, is available in the Arts Center bookstore. It's $30; members get a 10 percent discount.

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Tattoo talk tonight

Leslie Newell Peacock — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 14:46:27 -0500

Michael Atkinson, author of "Tattooed: The Sociogenesis of a Body Art," will give a talk tonight by the same name at 6 p.m. at the Arkansas Arts Center (reception 5:30 p.m.). Atkinson's talk accompanies the Arts Center's new exhibit, "Tattoo Witness: Photography by Mark Perrott," which opens to the public Friday. Also accompanying the exhibit are murals done by Little Rock area tattoo artists; both photography show and murals are in the Wolfe Gallery.

Atkinson (in photo below) was at the gallery this afternoon, studying a mural by Scott Diffee and Alina Bennett of The Parlor. Small stenciled tattoo images surround the giant skull in this piece; Atkinson explained that some dated to the 1920s. Some, like the swallow, are still done; Adrian Berry, a second generation artist who works with his father, Robert Berry, at 7th Street Tattoos, said it's popular with people who've gotten a divorce. Atkinson's talk ought to be a great one on a topic seldom examined in arts museums.

About the photography exhibit: I got a look at Mark Perrott's large-scale (44-by-44 inch) portraits of tattooed people this afternoon and they are gorgeous and narrative and sometimes startling. The subjects stare right into the camera, some with the kind of challenging look that says this is me, take it or leave it. Many of Perrott's people — folks he shot at tattoo parlors over a number of years (Times article here) — are quite beautiful, like "Virginia" (above), and by shooting in black and white, Perrott has de-emphasized the tattoo and emphasized the subject. So the photograph "Virginia" (above) is not just a picture of any tattooed woman, but a portrait of a confident beauty, whose dress — a string-tied bosom revealing top — deliberately echoes the spider web on her arm. Perrott's left no doubt that Virginia is a strong woman that you don't want to mess with.

Other portraits: Steve of Union City, N.J., holding a Heineken and taking a deep drag on a cigarette, with, among other images, the swallow. Joshua of Pittsburgh, who has spiky hair, a tattoo of Jesus and a locked chain around his neck. Margie, one of the few smiling faces in the show and here's why: Her tattoo is of herself as Little Red Riding Hood, with a wolf carrying a basket of wine.

Another photo, "Megan," is of a woman naked from head to waist to show her tattoo, a "tribal" abstracted thorny vine circling one breast and goes up over her shoulder. She wears a barbed-wire necklace and her nipples are pierced; she's a beauty in a prickly portrait.

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Job cuts help balance budget: UPDATE

Leslie Newell Peacock — Mon, 11 Jun 2012 16:10:47 -0500

Arkansas Arts Center director Todd Herman is meeting with staff right now to discuss changes in personnel for the upcoming fiscal year. Two people are losing their jobs and their positions have been eliminated. One of the two could be Joe Lampo, deputy director of programs, who the board of directors made interim director after Nan Plummer's resignation in 2010. Another is in the associate director of major gifts.

The Arts Center expects net savings of $106,000 in personnel costs in the $6 million budget for fiscal year 2013 it passed today. It is down to 47 43 full-time and nine part-time employees; the 2012 and 2013 budgets axed four job titles total. Another position was reduced to part-time.

The 2013 budget is nearly $1 million more than last year's. The difference: the Arts Center's biggest fund-raiser, Tabriz, and a ticketed exhibition, "Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London." The budget also includes $200,000 in development dollars from as yet unidentified sources; board chairman Charlotte (Chucki) Bradbury said the savings from the job cuts are separate from the $200,000.

Two crucial curatorial positions are being filled with grants from the Henry Luce Foundation, and a private individual has funded those positions for 2013-2014 and 2014-2015. The Arts Center also got an unexpected bequest of $256,000 earlier this year.

UPDATE: Former interim director Lampo was one of the two employees terminated, Herman said in a phone call. He said the staff — including the new curators, expected to be hired in July — will help absorb his duties. Herman himself will take on some of the fund-raising tasks that Toni Roosth, the development person whose job was also terminated, had.

Herman said it wasn't an easy decision, "but necessary for the long-term health of the institution. That has got to be my top priority." He noted that the Arts Center's need to be bare-bones in its budgeting is not unique, with grants, foundation, corporate and private giving all over the country declining.

Even in a perfect world, Herman said, the positions cut today might not be filled; he said there was some managerial redundancy at the Arts Center. "Are we at maximum staff levels? No, but are these what we need? Not necessarily."

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Arts Center panel proposes $6 million budget

Leslie Newell Peacock — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 20:53:11 -0500

The finance committee of the Arkansas Arts Center today discussed a proposed $6 million budget for its fiscal year starting July 1, which is about $1 million more than last year's budget. The budget goes to the full board at noon Monday.

Arts Center deputy director of operations Laine Harber and committee head Mary Elllen Vandgilder went over with committee members their reasoning for the increase: They expect increased revenues from Tabriz, museum school tuition, ticket sales to the 2013 exhibition of works by Rembrandt, Gainesborough, Van Dyck and other important artists from Kenwood House, England, and grant and development revenues.

In a press release, Arts Center Director Todd Herman said the standard operating portion of the budget is $5.2 million; the remaining dollars are considered special revenue.

Still, the budget is ambitious. The Arts Center's fund-raising in 2012 missed its budget by around $500,000, Harber said. It's been a bad time for arts institutions the nation over, and the bad economy hit the Arts Center when it was down, thanks to a failed promised gift and unexpected spending related to its "World of the Pharaohs" exhibition.

The Arts Center's cash situation is vastly improved over April projections, Harber said, thanks to unexpected gifts and its ability to put off certain exhibition expenses until the 2013 budget. Once expected to be around $350,000, it not looks like it will be about $40,000, and even that could be zeroed out by putting off payables until 2013.

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Coming tomorrow: Massad, Digital Dialogues

Leslie Newell Peacock — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:51:22 -0500

The Arkansas Arts Center opens two new exhibitions tomorrow: "The Still Lifes of G. Daniel Massad," photorealistic pastels by the Oklahoma-born artist (now a resident of Pennsylvania), and "The New Materiality: Digital Dialogues at the Boundaries of Contemporary Craft."

Massad writes this about his work on his website.

I look for the image that will fascinate me throughout the months-long process of realizing it on paper; for the image that will take hold in memory, like a particularly vivid but not yet intelligible dream; for the image that will keep me on the edge of understanding, as if it were speaking earnestly to me about matters of life and death in a voice so low I have to listen hard for the words. Part of my search is active, painstaking, time-consuming. I do what I can. I construct, dismantle, and reconstruct. I look carefully at the objects I try to render, and then look again – urging myself past that contented partial knowledge I always want to think of as complete. I build on paper thick layers of pastel, the surface of which is more beautiful to me than I can account for, and then refine that surface, bit by bit. That is what I know how to do. But (and here’s the paradox): what I know how to do, even what I know how to do well, does not make good pictures. For the essential part of the search is indirect. It goes on – perhaps it is continually going on – beyond the purview of consciousness, outside the authority of my will, regardless of my best efforts. It is as if my chief task were nothing more than putting myself in the place where the next picture will find me – where it will, in a sense, get in my way.

"The New Materiality," organized by the Fuller Craft Museum, features work by craft artists who blend traditional materials with digital video and audio, computerized design and other technologies. Artists in the show include Nathalie Miebach, Wendy Maruyama, Brian Boldon, Shaun Bullens, Sonya Clark, Lia Cook, Susan Working, E.G. Crichton, Donald Fortescue and Lawrence LaBianca, Christy Matson, Cat Mazza, Mike and Maaike, Tim Tate and Mark Zirpel.

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Arts Center cash woes

Leslie Newell Peacock — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 15:28:44 -0500

The Arkansas Arts Center is looking at ending its fiscal year with a cash flow deficit of $365,299, according to its financial officer's best estimates, and will likely have to go to the Arts Center Foundation for help.

Chucki Bradbury, chairman of the Arts Center's board of directors, said today the center suffered a "perfect storm" this fiscal year, suffering from a downturn in private giving (it didn't have a development officer for several months), an exhibition schedule that included no high profile paid exhibitions to boost traffic and membership, unexpected maintenance problems (it will probably have to replace the HVAC boilers to the tune of $80,000), and so forth.

Development numbers are under budget by nearly $400,000.

Bradbury said the silver lining is that the board is fully aware and understands the Arts Center's finances, something that could not have been said about the board several years ago. Also: Next year the Arts Center will have a huge exhibit that will include a famed self-portrait by Rembrandt — which the New York Times called "magnificently plainspoken" in an article about the painting's appearance at the Metropolitan Museum. From the Met to the Arts Center — big stuff. The cost of bringing the work, part of an exhibit from Kenwood House in England, is nearly paid for, which is also good news.

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The people's choice: Deborah Allen

Leslie Newell Peacock — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:44:03 -0600

The Arts Center announced today that Deborah Allen's painting "Letting Go" won the inaugural People's Choice Award in the 54th annual Delta Exhibition, which runs through March 28 at the Arkansas Arts Center.

Delta goers could cast their votes at the Arts Center or on its Facebook or Twitter account.

Allen is a Little Rock artist; you can see more of her work on her website.

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Back to the '90s: NOT SOLD OUT

Leslie Newell Peacock — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 12:21:36 -0600

Benny Andrews. Steven Assael. Milton Avery. Elizabeth Catlett. Judy Chicago. Francois Boucher. Elaine DeKooning. Juan Gris. Philip Guston. John Marin. Henri Mattise. Sister Gertrude Morgan. Elie Nadelman. Egon Schiele. Paul Signac. Abraham Walkowitz.

That's a pretty hefty lineup, pulled together for the Arkansas Arts Center's "Building the Collection: Art Acquired in the 1990s" exhibit. The Contemporaries are throwing a ~~sold-out~~ party tonight centering around the show of ceramics and works on paper — "Culture Shock: The '90s" — but if you didn't buy a ticket, you can see the show another day until May 13. update: my information on the tickets was wrong! You can still party tonight at the Arts Center, 7 p.m., $10 members, $19.90 guests.

The go-go '90s were a good decade for collection building at the Arts Center — more than 2,000 artworks were either donated or purchased.

Yes, there are Arkansas artists along with the seraphim — Carroll Cloar, Louis Freund, Laura Phillips, Marjorie Williams-Smith. Here's a complete list of what's in the show with thumbnails. Thanks to Thom Hall.

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A Rembrandt in Arkansas

Leslie Newell Peacock — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 10:25:46 -0600

It’s a year away, but the exhibition “Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough: The Treasures of Kenwood House, London” coming to the Arkansas Arts Center is something to think about now. The exhibition will bring paintings to Arkansas unlike any before, including a self-portrait by Rembrandt that will first travel to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York before making its appearance here.

The next best thing to seeing the work is talking about it with Arts Center director Todd Herman, who becomes chatty and animated when he talks about art and art history. He gave me a primer last week on some of the work in the show, which will open next summer, just as the Arts Center is wrapping up its 50th anniversary observance. It should make a fine “bookend,” Herman said, coming 50 years after the Arts Center opened with an exhibition of Old Masters from the Metropolitan.

The works, some of them larger-than-life, full-length portraits created for English country manors in the 17th and 18th centuries, will hang in the Wolfe and Jeannette Rockefeller galleries. There will be a small charge for the show — around $10 or so, Herman said — half the $22 charged for the “World of the Pharaohs” blockbuster that nearly busted the Arts Center in 2009 and 2010. The Arts Center’s board made a ceremonial gesture in January when it voted to give its blessing to the expensive exhibit (though it pales in comparison to the million-dollars-plus cost of “Pharaohs”).

Besides works by Rembrandt, Van Dyck and Gainsborough, paintings by Frans Hals, Sir Joshua Reynolds, J.M.W. Turner, Francois Boucher, George Romney and masterworks by artists less known to us will be part of the exhibit.

The exhibition of European art allows the Arts Center to prove its continuing importance now that Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art has opened in Bentonville. “In some ways it puts an exclamation point on the fact that we have an international collection of stature,” Herman said. (The Arts Center’s collection includes a Rembrandt etching, a Boucher charcoal and a Romney oil lent by the Winthrop Rockefeller Charitable Trust.)

When Herman looked through the list of works in the American Federation for the Arts-organized show, he saw “one spectacular painting after another.”

The Rembrandt, painted circa 1665, Herman said, is one of the rare self-portraits in which he depicts himself as an artist, “late in life, as someone who has lived a worldly existence.” The artist’s earlier self-portraits showed him laughing, or in historical costume; the late portrait is “very moving,” Herman said, capturing a man who had seen changes in fortune.

Anthony Van Dyck, a student of Peter Paul Rubens, was “a beautiful painter and draftsman” with an easy technique, Herman said; the oil medium was “second nature” to him, Herman said. His “Princess Henrietta of Lorraine, Attended by a Page (1634),” nearly 7 feet tall, shows a woman dressed in sumptuous silks and lace; a page dressed in red velvet and holding flowers looks up at her. Like “Princess Henrietta,” Thomas Gainsborough’s 95-by-61 inch portrait of Mary, Countess Howe, painted a century later, also has “wallpower,” Herman said, “an interesting aspect of this show.” The works were meant to convey the importance of the subject; in his portrait of Louisa Manners (1779), Sir Joshua Reynolds places her next to a classical column as a way of imbuing the subject with importance.

Frans Hals’ “liquid light approach to paint application” and visible brush strokes were a precursor to the impressionists that would follow him two centuries later, Herman said; his painting of a smiling Dutch merchant dressed in lace, “Pieter van den Broecke,” will be at the Arts Center.

Two of the “wonderful surprises” of the Kenwood House collection are large paintings by Francois Boucher, an 18th century painter of romantic scenes who “led the way in the rococo movement.” There will also be what Herman called a “typical Turner landscape” of stormy seas.

“Two Girls Dressing a Kitten by Candlelight,” an 18th century painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, an artist not as well known to the American public, was described by Herman as “charming.” It is a chiaroscuro work, and besides being charming it is also wryly sexual, thanks to the expression on the little girls’ faces and the kitten’s tail, which curls up between its legs. A man of his day, Wright was fascinated by “what was groundbreaking in the world of science,” Herman said, and others of his candlelight paintings have to do with scientific themes.

The Arts Center almost missed its chance to exhibit “Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Gainsborough” because by the time sponsors could be confirmed the Milwaukee Art Museum had snatched up the last spot. However, delays in work at Kenwood House meant the traveling show could be extended to a fourth venue, and the Arts Center was chosen. Herman has gotten two $100,000 pledges for the exhibit — one assumes from sponsors Bank of the Ozarks and the Windgate Charitable Foundation — which should cover about half the cost of bringing the show to Little Rock. It will open at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston and travel to the Seattle Art Museum and Milwaukee before coming here on June 6, 2013. It will run until Sept. 8, 2013.

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Coming Sunday: Judith Duff

Leslie Newell Peacock — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:48:53 -0600

Ceramic artist Judith Duff, who works in the Japanese Shino tradition in her studio in North Carolina, will give a talk at 6 p.m. Sunday at the Arkansas Arts Center as part of the Friends of Contemporary Crafts "Conversation" series.

Duff's work, which is included in the Arts Center's permanent collection, is wood-fired and created for practical use. She's taught workshops throughout the United States and in Japan, including Penland, Odyssey Center for Craft, Mudfire, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Tickets to the talk are $15 for FOCC members or $20 for non-members and includes a light dinner after the talk. To reserve, call 372-4000 or email FOCC@arkarts.com

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More good news for the AAC

Leslie Newell Peacock — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 13:08:09 -0600

The Windgate Foundation has issued a challenge grant of $100,000 to the Arkansas Arts Center as a match for "new money" — from new donors, members who've let their memberships lapse, etc. It's not a billion, which the Walton Family Foundation has poured into Crystal Bridges Museum, but it will be a refreshing sip for the Arts Center.

Also at the board meeting yesterday, where a bequest of $225,000 was announced, director Todd Herman revealed that the Arts Center Foundation has made seven new acquisitions for the permanent collection.

In what I hope to make a regular feature on works of art in Arkansas museums, here's some information about one of those acquisitions, the Alfonso Ossorio above, sent to Eye Candy by Herman:

Born into a wealthy family in the Philippines, Alfonso Ossorio was educated in England and came to the U.S. at the age of 14. He studied Fine Art at Harvard University and the Rhode Island School of Design. During World War II, Ossorio worked as a medical illustrator specializing in arterio-vascular and neuro-surgery. After the war, Ossorio incorporated this training into a style that relied heavily on the surrealist influences coming out of Europe—the result of avant-garde artists and psychoanalysts fleeing Europe during the War—that was fueling a new group of artists in New York in the 1940s. Members of that group, including Ossorio, Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock, and Barnett Newman would go on to form the nucleus of the Abstract Expressionist movement. A year after this drawing was executed, Ossorio met Jackson Pollock and the two became life-long friends. Not only did Ossorio actively collect Pollock’s work, his own style began to take on the ‘all over’ gestural signature that Pollock made famous. In this drawing, however, Ossorio combines his training as a medical illustrator, his fascination with the interlocking rhythms of medieval illuminated manuscripts, the symbolic world of the subconscious and his ongoing struggles with the human conditions of life, death, spirituality and the wounds of the world.

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A gift to AAC, and upcoming shows

Leslie Newell Peacock — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:11:55 -0600

Arkansas Arts Center Director Tod Herman announced today at a meeting of the Center board of directors that the facility has received a bequest of $225,000 from the estate of Norris Taylor, a CPA from Fort Smith. Taylor's interest in the Arts Center was spurred by a sister who once taught at the Arts Center.

The gift comes in handy; it's approximately the sum the Arts Center is behind in its budget for the year. The AAC will use it to update its 12-year-old dinosaur of a website and make pre-pays on upcoming exhibits.

Herman also talked about a special exhibition he wants to bring to the Arts Center in the summer of 2013, as the Arts Center concludes its celebration of its 50th anniversary — 48 works by Rembrandt, van Dyck, Gainesborough and others from Kenwood House in North London. The show is expensive — $365,000 — and will cost another $90,000 to install, but Herman told the board that he had already received two pledges for $100,000. Though the board doesn't have to vote on exhibitions, board chairman Chucki Bradbury asked that it do so in this case as a show of support and commitment, and the show got unanimous approval from directors. The expense for the exhibition is paltry compared to the $1.7 million budget for the snakebit "World of the Pharaohs," but the board's vote demonstrates it's paying attention.

Board member emerita Jeane Hamilton noted that the new Arts Center's first exhibit in 1963 was "Four Centuries of European Art," and she said it would be a "fitting kickoff to the next 50 years" to exhibit of works of such magnitude. A self-portrait of Rembrandt will be included; it will be exhibited at the Metropolitan this April before joining the other works at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

The rest of the tentative exhibit schedule includes a photographic study of tattoo art by Mark Perrott later this year; blown glass sculpture designed by children and a Smithsonian exhibit on printmaking; installation art about Japanese internment by Wendy Maruyama (to be paired with a show of Edward Weston photographs made to illustrate Walt Whitman's "Leaves of Grass") in 2013 and a show of 1940s work by Mark Rothko in 2014.

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"Horizons Interrupted" at the AAC

Leslie Newell Peacock — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 14:31:29 -0600

"Horizons Interrupted," work by Piet Mondrian, Arthur Davies, Robert Henri, Hayley Lever, William Langson Lathrop, Frank Klepper, Johan-Barthold Jongkind and others, all from the Arts Center's permanent collection, opened today at the Arkansas Arts Center. The show was guest curated by Lepanto artist Norwood Creech, whose own work is inspired by the Delta landscape's horizon. Creech won the opportunity to be "Curator for a Day" at the Tabriz auction last year.

The show runs through March 11 in the Sam Strauss Sr. Gallery.

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Delta winners: Moorhead, Bailin, Anderson-Staley

Leslie Newell Peacock — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 13:12:43 -0600

And the winners of the 54th "Delta Exhibition" opening Jan. 27 at the Arkansas Arts Center are: Grand Award to Rod Moorhead of Oxford, Miss. ("9 Zen Nuns"); Delta Awards to David Bailin of Little Rock ("Cars") and Keliy Anderson-Staley of Russellville ("Helen"), and honorable mentions to David Bogus (Laredo, Texas), Marian Doville (Fort Smith), Stephen Harris (Memphis), Dixie Knight (Little Rock), Benjamin Krain (Maumelle), Zeek Taylor (Eureka Springs), John Willer (Eureka Springs) and Kat Wilson (Fayetteville).

The exhibition will feature 54 works by 50 artists. Tom Butler, executive director of the Columbus Museum in Columbus, Ga., was juror, working through 900 entries by 427 artists. Thirty of the selected artists are Arkansans.

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Will Barnet film tonight

Leslie Newell Peacock — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 13:15:55 -0600

"Will Barnet: Tracing the Soul of the Work," a 30-minute film directed by artist documentarian Dale Schierholt, will be shown at 6:30 p.m. tonight at the Arkansas Arts Center. After the film, docents will lead tours of the exhibit, "Will Barnet at the Arkansas Arts Center: A Centennial Exhibition." All free.

Here's my review of the show in the unlikely case you haven't read it.

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Arts Center wins Luce grant

Leslie Newell Peacock — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:55:07 -0600

The Arkansas Arts Center, operating on the tightest budget in years, has had to do without crucial curatorial positions. Today, the Arts Center announced that it won a $168,000 American Art Renewal Fund grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to fund, for one year, the positions of curator of drawings and curator of contemporary craft.

The Luce Foundation developed the American Art Renewal Fund as a temporary answer to the economic downturn. Because the funding is for a year only, Arts Center director Todd Herman has the Arts Center must commit to enlarging future budgets to continue funding the positions. There is no alternative — a museum with a huge collection of important works on paper and fine craft and no curators is an untenable idea.

Will update on when the hiring will take place when I get a call back from the AAC.

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Don't forget: Museum show tomorrow

Leslie Newell Peacock — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 15:52:18 -0600

Unless you're a member of the Arkansas Arts Center, tomorrow's the day for the annual Museum School Sale of works by the faculty and students of the Arts Center's school. It's again at Clear Channel Metroplex on Col. Glenn Road from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

This has always been a hugely attended show, with people coming to buy paintings, jewelry, pottery, woodworking, etc. as Christmas gifts (for themselves or others).

Arts Center members can go tonight from 6 to 8 p.m. The paintings at the top and bottom of this post by came from participants who kindly provided images (Mary Nancy Henry and Sue Henley). Also notifying me they'll be at the sale were Jennifer Coleman, Dee Schulten, Endia Bumgarner and Betsy Woodyard.

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Coming Friday: Will Barnet, to the Arts Center

Leslie Newell Peacock — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 17:08:45 -0500

This week's Art Notes column advances several exhibitions and events coming up, incuding the Arkansas Arts Center's “Will Barnet at the Arkansas Arts Center: A Centennial Exhibition,” which opens Friday. Here's the story. The show includes 80 drawings and watercolors by the 100-year-old artist, including a group given to the Arts Center by Barnet in honor of his friend and former Arts Center former director Townsend Wolfe.

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