MoCP Newsletter

May 31, 2005

Director's Notes

I am not sure if it is luck or skill or a combination, but the Museum seems to be attracting a lot of international attention lately. Three of us have published articles in arts magazines in Madrid and London and the current exhibition, Painting on Photography: Photography on Painting is enjoying editorial in London, Rome and Athens-based publications. This year the British Council shipped Associate Director Natasha Egan to Northern Ireland for a curatorial review of contemporary art, and the Goethe Institute has funded a trip and stay in Berlin for Curator Karen Irvine.

The Goethe Institute also paid for Marc Lüders’ presence at the opening and the Flemish Ministry of Culture paid for the shipping of Eddy De Vos’ work to the current exhibition. In November of 2004 the Museum hosted Oracle, the international gathering of photography curators here in Chicago, which probably helped also.

This is all good news, but not totally unexpected because it is solidly within the historical habits of our institution. Since 1983 the museum has hosted a high percentage of exhibitions of work from outside the U.S., both self produced and borrowed, primarily under the directorship of Denise Miller-Clark. The current staff has expertise in European, Asian and Latin American photographic practice so our audience can expect more of the same curatorial peregrinations.

We included a panel discussion in the opening of the current exhibition that included two Americans and two Europeans and it was heartening to note a common subtext of philosophical goals in the remarks of all four, including the questions they asked of each other. I am not sure that these goals can any longer be identified as national or regional, as was the practice in the past. In fact, there seemed to be resistance to national segregation of practice or concept. Hopefully we will learn more about this in the coming years as we continue to show good work from wherever we can find it.

- Rod Slemmons, Director

Artists to Watch

I was recently in Boston judging the 2005 Leopold Godowsky Jr. Color Photography Awards together with Brian Wallis, Curator of the International Center for Photography, New York, and Leslie K. Brown, Curator of the Photographic Resource Center, Boston University. Since all of the artists are nominated, it was a great opportunity to view a lot of strong color work in a short amount of time. We granted awards to five artists, including an Australian artist whose name was new to me: Anne Zahalka.

Her most recent series, Natural Wonders (2004)documents touristy sites where natural and artificial landscapes collide, and the kitschy, consumer-oriented atmosphere one finds in such places. Another artist we selected was Anthony Haughy, who recently stopped by the museum and visited with Rod. His series Disputed Territories sensitively depicts sites of conflict, past and present, in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Northern Ireland. Photographer Tim Davis’ project My Life in Politics and Andrea Robbins and Max Becher’s series Global Village, which documents a “poverty themepark” in Americus, Georgia that simulates third world conditions for educational purposes (yes, you read that right), also received awards.

- Karen Irvine, Curator

Behold, the New Site!

When the museum decided to finally cast off the antediluvian website we’d relied on for a bit too long, we approached the Chicago art scene’s unparalleled designer of choice, Jason Pickleman, for help. JNL Design doesn’t regularly dabble in websites, but leaning heavily on the great reputation of MoCP I managed to talk him into the project. He created an elegant, flexible, sensible design (no bells and whistles, no flash), then contracted cutting-edge web developers Nick Gracilla and Michele Krugel of Neoteric Design to bring it alive.

I remember the day when the first “gallery” (a movable strip of image details from our permanent collection and Midwest Photographers Project) was complete. Nick forwarded me a link to the home page and I gasped. It was so vibrant and visually generous, almost edible. The gallery banner links directly into artist pages, each containing (or soon to contain) scholarly text and bibliographies written by our staff. We’ll be regularly rotating the images, so make sure to revisit them every few months.

For those of you who are web savvy, keep in mind as you explore it that it is essentially a blog, specially customized to accommodate all our visual and content needs. We can update it instantly and effortlessly through MovableType. We couldn’t be happier with our final product, and hope you agree. Many, many thanks to JNL Design, Neoteric Design, and Matthew McClintock at Columbia College Chicago for making our new online home possible!

- Jessica Jahner, Manager of Development and Communication

Talkin' Back II: Chicago Youth Respond

From May 10-14, the museum presented the exhibition Talkin’ Back II: Chicago Youth Respond for which over two hundred youth from six Chicago schools created work combining text and image exploring themes of self and identity in workshops led by photographers and writers drawn from Columbia College’s faculty and alumni. Over one hundred and fifty people attended the lively opening reception on May 10th, which included spoken word performances by poets Tricia Hersey and Avery Young.

Participating students and teachers expressed the pride they felt in seeing the fruits of their efforts professionally hung on the walls of a museum. Exhibiting artist Mark Mathias (12) from Beethoven school said, “It’s great because we might be famous some day.” Annette Elmore, a sixth-grade language arts teacher at Beethoven said, “I feel like I’m at a gallery in New York. This is great exposure for the students to see their work and others’.” One viewer who came to the museum to see the work of Lee Friedlander and also saw the Talkin’ Back show commented, “We always hear the negative stories about urban youth, but this exhibition shows their talent and skill and allows us to hear their own voices, not the stereotypes we see in the media.” Another viewer asked to be put in contact with one of the young artists and purchased her piece for $150.00.

To unite the over two hundred youth from throughout the city who participated in the exhibition, in addition to the independent projects that each group created for the show, each class took part in a project called 1,000 Words/1,000 Images. Each class was given disposable cameras and was asked to create photographs interpreting the word rhythm. Each group was also given a reproduction of Abelardo Morell’s photograph Spilled Water, 1993, from the museum’s permanent collection and was asked to generate a list of descriptive words in response to the image. The words the students came up with through free association and prose poem forms were posted on the wall next to Morell’s piece. Morell happened to visit the museum during the course of the show and said that the words that the students generated in response to his photograph were “simply inspiring.”

The Talkin’ Back exhibition was curated by Corinne Rose, Manager of Education at the museum and Cynthia Weiss Director of Project AIM for the Columbia College Chicago Office of Community Arts Partnerships.

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