CROSSING THE LINE
African American Artist in the Jacqueline Bradley and Clarence Otis, Jr. Collection

January 19 - May 20

The Cornell Fine Arts Museum is proud to be the originating institution to present this outstanding Florida collection of leading modernist and contemporary African American photography, painting, sculpture and mixed media.  Jacqueline Bradley and Clarence Otis, Jr. began collecting art in 1983 after seeing the work of Robert Blackburn at Harlem's Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.  In a little over 20 years, an impressive collection of works by Romare Bearden, Sam Gilliam, William H. Johnson, Lyle Ashton Harris, Bob Thompson, Fred Wilson, Carrie Mae Weems, and Renee Cox, among many other notable artists, has been amassed.  Exhibition catalogue with essay by Franklin Sirmans.  Rollins College and the Cornell Fine Arts Museum appreciates the generous support of TIAA-CREF Financial Services!

 

Friday, January 19, 10-4 Cornell Fine Arts Museum   CROSSING THE LINE Symposium Thomas P. Johnson Distinguished Visiting Scholar Symposium The symposium will include presentations by four leading personalities from the contemporary, international, visual arts community.

Lyle Ashton Harris is amongst the most important contemporary photographers whose work explores and lays bare complex issues of gender, race, and power.  From 2000-01, Harris was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome.  His work has been exhibited at the Whitney, Guggenheim, and Corcoran, the ICA, London, and Kunsthalle, Basel.

Lowery Stokes Sims is Adjunct Curator for the Permanent Collection at The Studio Museum, Harlem.  She is distinguished as a scholar and curator of modern and contemporary art, and has authored numerous influential essays on African, Latino, Native and Asian American artists.  Dr. Sims served 27 years at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Franklin Sirmans is the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Menil Collection in Houston.  He was co-curator of the retrospective "Basquiat" for the Brooklyn Museum, LACMA, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in 2005-06.  A leading voice of visual art/cultural criticism, Sirmans is the former U.S. editor of Flash Art and editor-in-chief of Art AsiaPacific.

Fred Wilson is credited for his critical role in redefining the viewer's experience by creating site-specific installations that reveal racially biased curatorial practices.  Wilson's installation "Speak of Me as I Am" was presented at the United States Pavilion of the 50th International Venice Biennale in 2003.  His multi-media works are in the permanent collections of MoMA and the Whitney Museum, among others.

Fred Wilson
The Unnatural Movement of Blackness, 2006
Glass globe, electric light fixture with bulb,
chandelier elements, and beads
Courtesy of PaceWildenstein Gallery, © Fred Wilson

Carrie Mae Weems
From the Sea Island Series, 1991
Silver print
20 x 20 inches

Lyle Ashton Harris
Toussaint L'Ouverture, 1994
Polaroid photograph
30 x 20 inches

Kehinde Wiley
Simon George I, 2006
Oil on canvas
63 x 51 inches

Henri Matisse
Le Clown, early 1943
Stencil plate in Lenil colors, Teriade, Paris
16⅛ x 12 inches
Collection of The Morgan Library, New York

Henri Matisse
Le Cirque, 1943
Stencil plate in Lenil colors, Teriade, Paris
16⅛ x 12 inches
Collection of The Morgan Library, New York

HENRI MATISSE'S Jazz
 

January 19 - May 20

Begun in 1943 in the remote French hill town of Vence, Henri Matisse created the cut-out paper masterpiece Jazz.  For Matisse, "cut paper was like jazz music" in its freedom of form and linear verve.  The innovation of the twenty cut-outs included in the Jazz folio commissioned by the Parisian publisher, Teriade, sparked a crucial surge in the last years of Matisse's career.  This exhibition is possible through the generosity of The Morgan Library, New York and the Brossier Company, Winter Park, FL.

DIVERSE AFRICA
Ambassador and Mrs. Ulric Haynes, Jr. Collection

January 19 - May 20

The Ambassador and Mrs. Ulric Haynes, Jr. Collection of tribal art and jewelry reflects the vivid diversity of cultures and artistic traditions in Africa.  Acquired over 30 years, Ric and Yolande T. Haynes chose superb examples of jewelry and art from the Senufo peoples of the Ivory Coast, the Bedouin tribes of Tunisia, the Benin Kingdom of Nigeria, and the Ashanti of Ghana, among numerous others of which approximately 50 pieces will be included in the Cornell Fine Arts Museum exhibition.  Rollins College and the Cornell Fine Arts Museum appreciates the generous support from BB&T Wealth Management!

 

Thursday, February 22, 6:00 pm Cornell Fine Arts Museum Public Talk: "An Ambassador Collects"
Ambassador Ric Haynes will be speaking about his and his wife Yolande's experience as diplomats, collectors and citizens of vast and diverse Africa.

Songe (face mask in Kifwebe style), Zaire
Wood, cord, beads, polychrome

Yoruba (female figure with three children), Nigeria
Wood, oil base paint, cowries

Nick Cave
Soundsuit, 2006
Pieced found sequence and beaded garment
Photo courtesy of Jack Shainman Gallery, New York 
Collection of Randy Moore, New York

NICK CAVE SOUNDSUITS
 

January 19 - May 15

Chairman of the Fashion Design Department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Nick Cave has created an extraordinary range of tribal, haute couture ensembles known as Soundsuits.  Cave's urban, ceremonial costumes are created from recycled materials and artifacts including twigs, bottle caps, corks, lint, socks and sweaters, Easter grass, mirrors, sequins, wood, and anything that might be found on city-wide material gathering forays.  Cave's soundsuits belong to a broad cultural tradition that pays homage to ritual costuming in Africa, the carnivale of the Caribbean, south and Latin America, and indigenous ceremonies both sacred and profane where costume functions as a transformational experience.

 

Wednesday, February 28, 6:00 pm Cornell Fine Arts Museum Gallery Talk: "Continuity and Divergence in Recent African American Art" Jody Cutler, Assistant Professor of Art History, University of Central Florida. Dr. Cutler is a scholar of contemporary art, art theory and criticism, with an emphasis on African American art.  Her 2001 dissertation from SUNY, Stony Brook, is entitled The Paintings of Robert Colescott: Race Matters, Art and Audience.

SENIOR ART EXHIBITION
 

April 27 - May 13

Rollins College graduating studio art majors exhibit their paintings, prints, videos, photographs, drawings, sculptures, installations, and crafts that they completed during the last four years.

Audim Culver (b. 1983)
From Pompeii to Naples, 2005
Digital print from 120mm slide (Holga camera)
35 x 18 inches