Media
PARDONING A TURKEY
By Mark Masuoka, Executive Director and CEO
The tradition of our government officials pardoning a turkey during the Thanksgiving holiday is a symbolic act of forgiveness by allowing one lucky turkey the chance to see another day. It may not be the most profound reflection of a holiday created to give thanks, but in many ways it suggests that in order to be truly thankful, we must first understand what it means to give. The Akron Art Museum is thankful for our family of supporters because of what they give to the museum, and even more so, we are thankful for what is allows us to give back to our community.
Over the past year, the museum has provided hundreds families and kids the opportunity to participate in free education programs and gallery admission as a result of support provided by our generous museum sponsors. FREE THURSDAYS at the Akron Art Museum is a substantial gift to the community and a successful initiative that makes it possible for everyone to have a quality art experience.
In order for the museum to provide these programs and art experiences, it takes a highly dedicated staff that gives their time, energy and creativity far beyond the call of duty. I AM THANKFUL to have the privileged to work with a group of highly creative individuals that understand the value of giving back to our community and helping everyone to not just be creative, but to LIVE CREATIVE.
Thank you for your support and please join me in celebrating our cultural community and thanking those who have dedicated their lives to enrich the lives of others.
A Look Back Into the Archives: Folk Art
By Mandy Tomasik, KSU library and information science practicum student
If you haven’t seen the new Butch Anthony: Vita Post Mortum exhibition yet, you really should. It’s phenomenal, and actually only the latest in a long line of folk, outsider and self-taught artist exhibitions here at the Akron Art Museum.
“But wait,” you say. “Doesn’t the Akron Art Museum have a modern and contemporary focus? What’s with the folk art?” I think Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. says it best: “American folk art both is and has been very much at home with modern art. Serious searching artists of the 20th Century, forced for various reasons to alienate themselves from academic art, or dissatisfied with the rise and fall of the experiments and “movements” of modern art, have been attracted to and strongly influenced by folk art in a search for re-appraisal and basic definitions of expressions and media.” (qtd. in Six Naives: Ashby, Borkowski, Fassanella, Nathaniel, Palladino, Tolson exhibition catalog, 1973, Akron Art Museum Archives)
Here’s Mary Borkowski, part of the December 1973-January 1974 Six Naives exhibition.
Just hanging with the cat, the picture of mid-century domesticity. But then in 1965, she began making embroidered thread pictures on felt or velvet backgrounds. These surreal images exude a mood of “melancholy and muted terror” (Six Naives: Ashby, Borkowski, Fassanella, Nathaniel, Palladino, Tolson exhibition catalog, 1973, Akron Art Museum Archives) that one wouldn’t possibly expect to come from that sweet cat lady.
A snake-man whipping a dog-man and a dapper gentleman in his underwear. And that’s what I think is so interesting about folk artists. Viewing their work offers glimpses into seemingly intense personal worlds that are often surprising, refreshing and even unsettling. So on that note, definitely check out Butch Anthony: Vita Post Mortum in the Corbin Gallery through January 25, 2015. If you stop by the museum library as well, you can even make your own skeletonized portrait à la Butch Anthony to go up on display!
A Look Back Into the Archives: The Inverted Q
By Mandy Tomasik, KSU library and information science practicum student
This post is brought to you by the letter Q. Claes Oldenburg’s Inverted Q, to be exact. While perhaps one of the most recognizable pieces in the museum, I don’t think that many people know the story of how the Inverted Q came to be and its inextricable ties to Akron.
Oldenburg was exploring the idea of colossal letters in various monumental situations. While working out the possibilities of a giant Q situated in a landscape, the artist came to the conclusion that “an inverted position seemed necessary because a Q with its tail buried wouldn’t be a Q at all.” (qtd. in Oldenburg: The Inverted Q exhibit catalog, 1977, p 7, Akron Art Museum Archives) In January of 1973, Oldenburg visited Akron in response to an invitation from Louis and Mary Myers to work on a sculpture fabricated in rubber that would be placed adjacent to the main library. Looking at his first sculpted clay study for the piece, I think it’s easy to see why he deemed the Q an appropriate subject for Akron, as it is reminiscent of a tire in shape and it makes sense for a monumental letter to be living in the vicinity of a library.
The artist explored many iterations of the Q made from different materials. He sketched Q’s made from chopped wood and Q’s with sharp horns. He crafted plaster versions cast from sewn canvas molds, 18 inch Q’s cast in the synthetic rubber material Hytrel, and a six foot prototype in rigid foam. After much experimenting, a full size, six foot rubber Q proved infeasable and the first version of the final product was cast in concrete in Kingston, New York in September of 1976. By the next summer, the final surface treatment had been completed. It looked like this:
No really, it did! The Inverted Q wasn’t always the Pepto Pink wonder that it is today. It was originally an umber color until it underwent a three-month restoration in 1986, at which point it was refinished with a pink hue, which the artist believes gives it a more “rubbery feel”. (Q-Tip. Akron Beacon Journal article, 1986, Akron Art Museum Archives)
For even more scintillating information about the Inverted Q and to see some of the artist’s sketches and studies relating to this piece, search for “Claes Oldenburg” in the museum’s online collection here!
A Look Back Into the Archives: Art in Use
By Mandy Tomasik, KSU library & information science practicum student
It’s that time of year when the air turns chilly and thoughts turn to things comfy and cozy. I have been in squirrel mode preparing my apartment for the cold weather ahead, since the thought of hibernating in a cluttered space makes me claustrophobic all over. So, with housekeeping on my mind, I couldn’t help but notice while working in the archives the significant number of house and home-related exhibits clustered in the mid-1940’s to early 1950’s. There’s probably plenty to be said about the interest in domestic affairs and industrial design in the aftermath of WWII, but I’ll leave that to the experts and instead share my favorite finds from:
First of all, who could pass up this (now) classic Eames coffee table and chair?
After all, I’m going to need somewhere to park my new wire recorder!
Truly though, I want this.
There’s something illicitly fascinating about smoking-related objects from back in the heyday of cigarettes, like these ashtrays and “cigarette box”. Very Mad Men.
However, those don’t hold a candle (or a match?) to this “Glamor Kit”! The ladies surely went wild over this “Plastic combination cigarette case and compact”.
So glamorous!
The items in Useful Objects for the Home were selected based on their practical applications, while keeping design as a primary consideration. The exhibition catalog (pictured at the top) lists the objects, their designers, producers and retailers. “Prices range[d] broadly between 20¢ and $25,” (Useful Objects for the Home exhibition catalog, 1947, Akron Art Museum Archives), and the majority of items were available in local Akron stores.
This exhibit, which took place November – December 1947, was part of a series called Art in Use, which included companion exhibitions titled Plan Your Home (January 1946), Made in Akron (September 1946) and Contemporary Furnishings (February 1947). The Akron Art Institute, the precursor to the Akron Art Museum, offered a four year course that included instruction in field of industrial design. At the Institute’s art school, “All art students, regardless of future plans for specialization in art, [were] required to participate in the study of ‘art in use’.” (Useful Objects for the Home exhibition catalog, 1947, Akron Art Museum Archives)
If we’re going to be all holed up in the coming winter, it might as well be with some well-designed and useful art! Of course, when we must venture out, there’s always the option of cozying up with some art here at the museum too.
Farewell Buoy
By Mark Masuoka, Executive Director and CEO
In many ways, the de-installation of Tony Feher’s Buoy is a sign of things to come, not what has been accomplished. Over the past four months, the Akron Art Museum has offered the public the opportunity to re-envision the architecture of the art museum and to re-contextualize our urban surroundings. Tony Feher’s Buoy had become part of the public conscientiousness and spurred conversation about contemporary art, even for those who did not identify it as art, but an unexpected anomaly hanging from the art museum. Buoy has become etched in our memory and will soon become part of the urban folklore of Akron. Farewell Buoy.
Read MoreA Look Back Into the Archives: John Pearson
By Mandy Tomasik, KSU library & information science practicum student
Let’s talk about math.
No, wait, come back!
John Pearson has already done all the math, we just get to enjoy the results. The new John Pearson: Intuitive Structures exhibition in the Isroff Gallery is the first solo show at the Akron Art Museum for this enduring figure in the Northeast Ohio arts community. Educated at the Harrogate College of Art, Yorkshire, the Royal Academy Schools, London and Northern Illinois University, Pearson taught at Oberlin College from 1972 until his retirement this year. In addition to his remarkable teaching career, he is the recipient of numerous regional and international art grants, fellowships and awards including the 1975 Cleveland Arts Prize.
Although this is his first one-man show here at the museum, Pearson has participated in two previous group exhibitions. Six Artists: Breidel, Davidovitch, Eubel, Lucas, Pearson, Tacha was on view from December 17, 1972 through January 28, 1973, and featured local artists working with conceptual ideas. His second appearance, in Five Perspectives: Henry Halem, Patrick Kelly, Edward Mayer, John Pearson, and Judith Saloman, occurred April 24 through June 5, 1983, and likewise highlighted area artists who all explored abstract modes.
Pearson arrived at the minimalist geometric abstractions he created in the mid 1960’s and 1970’s through the rigorous application of mathematical systems like the one pictured above. While this sounds dry, Pearson’s explanation of these works is anything but:
When I use mathematical structures to make my own structures, I am using concepts and forms which have been developed to define specific aspects of the harmony perceived in nature. I am taking that harmony, fracturing it, putting it back together in my own way, to deal with another kind of harmony — the harmony that is in my spirit, in my soul. (Five Perspectives exhibit catalogue, 1983, p 20, Akron Art Museum Archives)
Indulge your inner mathematician and discover some examples of Pearson’s early systematic mode in the John Pearson: Intuitive Structures exhibit on view in the Isroff Gallery through February 8, 2015. Also, don’t miss the artist’s Gallery Talk on October 9, starting at 6 pm.
Cultural Shift: Rust Never Sleeps
Knight Foundation recently awarded the Akron Art Museum $1 million to engage the public with a series of groundbreaking exhibitions. Executive Director and CEO Mark Masuoka writes about the museum’s new efforts and approach to community building.
As the title of Neil Young’s 1979 album Rust Never Sleeps suggests, time stands still for no one and only action can deter obsolescence. In a constantly shifting cultural landscape, art organizations can choose to adapt and potentially survive in current economic conditions, or forge ahead and develop innovative ideas that will drive our creative economy. How can cultural institutions move beyond survival mode by redefining cultural habits and re-imagining art museums as the new civic commons?
In many ways, the Akron Art Museum is no different that any other mid-sized, mid-western, post-industrial, contemporary art museum in the country. Nationally, art museums face similar challenges in developing and executing creative strategies to retain their dedicated members and supporters while reaching new audiences, including the next generation of culture seekers.
Or just maybe, the Akron Art Museum is very different, because it is perfectly positioned to embrace Akron, a city, which is working to differentiate itself from other “rust belt” communities, and struggling to discover a new identity. Cracking the culture code means seizing this moment to be the provocateur, to stir up latent feelings of cultural discontent and expose the hyper-indulgence that often accompanies complacency.
Can an art museum be the cultural change agent that navigates complex social systems to ignite social, cultural and economic change?
With a firm belief that apathy is the enemy of change, the Akron Art Museum has begun the process of awakening minds and engaging hearts by stimulating risk taking and presenting a new value proposition: we are not just seeking the rewards of being creative, but encouraging everyone in the city to LIVE CREATIVE.
This new direction reflects the museum’s efforts to engage new audiences and building stronger communities. We are transitioning from a traditionally closed social ecosystem to a progressively open environment that focuses on reaching a broader spectrum of users, makers and supporters.
The challenge that we face cannot be met with a single one-step solution. The old formula used by art museums no longer works. It’s not only about the art. Art museums need to take into consideration the importance of engagement and the transformation that takes while lives are enriched. Culture seekers expect to be directly engaged and audiences want to understand how their investment in arts and culture will be valued, delivered and ultimately consumed. The development of new exhibitions and programs are carefully linked to how the Akron Art Museum captures the imagination of the high frequency users and the culturally disengaged.
The path to success is a non-linear sequence of events that requires a sense of urgency, adventure and introspection. Civic engagement becomes the conduit to which we both receive and deliver visual content and information resulting in community-inspired art projects and relevant public programs that bring people together in a meaning exchange of ideas and inspired enthusiasm.
Over the past year, we have begun the process of working directly with artists to create temporary interventions within the museum’s public spaces and beyond our front doors extending out into Downtown Akron.
In April 2014, Tony Feher installed three 54-inch tall red marine buoys from the cantilevers that reach out from the roof of the museum, as part of his 25-year survey exhibition featured more than 50 of the artist’s works. His exhibition included a two-week residency at the museum, which incorporated the architecture of our Coop Himmelb(l)au designed Knight Building into the exhibition. Buoy exemplifies Feher’s creative process by bringing attention to everyday objects and materials and presenting them in new and unpredictable ways. In dangling the buoys upside down, Feher subverts their intended function and offers viewers an element of surprise, delight and curiosity. These qualities are enhanced by the attention the buoys bring to museum and by suspending the unfamiliar with the recognizable.
With each and every exhibit, program and event, we have the opportunity to reach out to Akron, and propose a new civic strategy that ensures the cultural health and wellness for our entire community.
Trains on the Brain
by Alison Caplan, Director of Education
Trains are on my brain this fall, from the sound of the historic steam engine chugging through the valley to the powerful black and white images by O. Winston link hanging in the museum’s Bidwell gallery.
My toddler’s obsession with the train table at our local library has led me to embrace amazing picture books like Steam Train Dream Train and Locomotive. Steam Train Dream Train by Sherri Duskey Rinker, illustrated by Tom Lichtenheld is a great bedtime story featuring animals loading kid favorites, like ice cream, race cars and bouncy balls, onto a train that choo choos its way along a nighttime landscape. Caldecott award winner Locomotive by Brian Floca takes readers back 150 years to the introduction of the transcontinental railway. Trains Go by Steve Light offers a great alternative for art babes, showing the chunks and clunks of different train types in a refreshing and appropriate horizontal orientation.
The Magnetic Fields classic indie pop record The Charm of the Highway strip is one of my favorite road trip records and Baby I Was Born on a Train is getting some much needed reviving after recently being covered by the Arcade Fire.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H95jGsZmzmQ&w=420&h=315]
Local native Jim Jarmusch’s Mystery Train is set in Memphis and revolves around a young Elvis obsessed Japanese couple who ride the train into town to pay homage to their favorite country stars. The film features the classic Elvis song and even a visit from the King himself, in ghost form. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q_eE0NPArEY&w=420&h=315]
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nb0yBDSqTfs&w=420&h=315]
There’s also Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train, about two men who meet on a train, plot and swap murders. The crisscrossing train tracks are a major reoccurring symbol throughout the film. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dT5cIeTupq0&w=420&h=315]
Who doesn’t love a good PBS documentary? The American Experience: Riding the Rails explores the role of trains during the Great Depression and the development of hobo culture, which is outlined so knowingly by comedian John Hodgman in his book The Areas of My Expertise, which features many seriously delivered fake facts about hobos. In fact a fan of Hodgman’s took the PBS documentary and mashed it up with the audio version of Hodgman’s book. It’s pretty convincing. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/rails/ Hodgman will be at the Main Library as part of their Main Event Speaker Series on October 22. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1JIa5r5nkE&w=420&h=315]
O. Winston Link may have documented the last hurrah of train transportation, but Amtrack is aiming to infuse it with creativity by creating a writers in residency program. Who knows what kind of artwork locomotives will inspire in the future. http://blog.amtrak.com/2014/03/amtrak-residency-for-writers/
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WjEzExukNMs&w=560&h=315]
Looking for a local train fix? Hop on the steam train http://www.cvsr.com/steam-in-the-valley. Join us at the Akron Art Museum this Thursday, September 11 at 6:00 pm for a reading by Jane Ann Turzillo author of Murder and Mayhem on Ohio’s Rails and the film The Photographer, His Wife, Her Lover, which will screen at 6:30 pm. https://akronartmuseum.wpengine.com/calendar/film-the-photographer-his-wife-her-lover/6300
O. Winston Link: A Look Back Into the Archives
By: Kent State University Practicum Student, Alexandra Lynch
O. Winston Link was born in Brooklyn in 1914. Link’s love of trains began when he was just a young boy. “I’ve loved trains since I was 4 years old,” he said. “I got started in photography photographing trains.” During World War II, when “it was against the law to photograph trains,” he said he would take his camera and lie in wait for them around the Mineola, Long Island Railroad (Art People, Michael Brenson). Link photographed the Norfolk and Western steam division from 1955 until the line was closed in 1961. During this time, he produced 2,500 images of the N&W and traveled through six states and countless counties of the “Land of Plenty Places”, named by the lines veterans. This work would have seemed taxing to most, but for Link it was the closest thing to heaven. Ogle Winston Link passed away of a hear attack outside of a railway station on January 30, 2001 at the age of 83.
Poster from Link’s first exhibition Railroad Photographs of the 1950s
O. Winston Link is being featured in a solo exhibition for the second time in the Akron Art Museum galleries. Link’s first exhibition, Railroad Photographs of the 1950’s, was on view June 4th through July 3rd, 1983, and was the museum’s first major exhibition of railroad photography. The exhibition featured over 40 photographs captured with Link’s unique, homemade lights and flash equipment that he used to illuminate the scenes he was trying to record. 10 images from this show can be seen in the Akron Art Museum current exhibition, Along the Tracks: O. Winston Link, located in the Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Gallery until November 9, 2014.
Be sure to check out the upcoming O. Winston Link film, The Photographer, His Wife, Her Lover in the museum auditorium on September 11, 2014, 6:30 pm.
Fall 2014 Director's Message
By Mark Masuoka, Executive Director and CEO
A is for the Akron (Art Museum)
With the recent publication of three Akron-centric books, A is for Akron by Karen Starr and Joanna Wilson, The Hardway on Purpose: Essays and Dispatches from the Rust Belt, by David Giffels and Dave Lieberth’s history of Akron, Inventive. Industrious. Inspired., I feel it is only appropriate that the focus my attention is on my new home.
Over the past year, I’ve been listening and learning about what it means to be from Akron and the impact the Akron Art Museum has had on the community. To that end, the art museum has celebrated the seventh anniversary of its John S. and James L. Knight Building and has taken full advantage of the forward thinking design and architecture of Coop Himmelb(l)au and as the building continues to attract visitors from all over the world as well as throughout Northeast Ohio. The expansion of the museum’s galleries and public spaces has also proven to be a great addition to the museum and a significant cultural asset to Akron; producing a substantial increase in our public programming and our ability to engage with the community.
So why does this matter to Akron? It matters because the expansion of the Akron Art Museum has been the catalyst for a cultural shift, not only for the museum, but also for our entire Akron community. It has set in motion a new set of possibilities about what it means to be an art museum, our role in the community and most of all, it has raised expectations. We no longer have the option to only live within our means, but to live up to our full potential.
As part of the original vision of the expansion of the museum, the development of an outdoor space-directly to the south-currently our member’s parking lot, will focus of our attention on creating a public space that will serve as an urban oasis and provide a place where people can gather to enjoy art. It will also be a space that can offer tranquility and encourage users to slow down and take a moment to just sit still and unwind from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. The premise is that an outdoor space could be more that just additional programming space, but should offer the opportunity to be an active participant in the life of the city and to be a connection point to visitors that seek a way to live creative. Join us on November 11 for our forth Community Conversation: Shifting the Cultural Landscape, Public Place | Public Space. This series of community forums are generously sponsored by the Burton D. Morgan Foundation and are intended to expand our ability to facilitate conversations on a broad range of topics including art, entrepreneurship, innovation and placemaking.
Inside the museum, our expanded galleries also provide additional space to showcase new acquisitions to our ever-expanding collection including Tony Feher’s Untitled, sculpture, acquired through the generosity of The Mary S and Louis S. Meyer Endowment Fund for Painting and Sculpture and currently installed in our Sandra L. and Dennis B. Haslinger Foundation Galleries. Our current exhibition, Skin and Bones: 20 Years of Drawing features over 300 works by Houston-based artist, Trenton Doyle Hancock in our Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries. Hancock’s work provides viewers with an insight into the artist’s inner life through his drawings and paintings and is inspired by comic books, superheroes, cartoons and graphic novels, which is filtered through his personal experiences and fueled by his creative spirit. Recent changes in our galleries also include interactive activities connected with each new major exhibition in our Jerry and Patsy Shaw Video Box and an expanded exhibition schedule in our Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation Gallery, featuring photographs from the Akron Beacon Journal archives celebrating their 175th anniversary.
Over the past year, we have launched three public projects outside of the museum’s walls including Jamie Burmeister’s Message Matters, Tony Feher’s Buoy and Jesse Strother’s Make Your Mark wall drawing at the Knight Center. This year, the museum will be announcing more projects intended to bring art directly into the community and to increase our effort to communicate our increased level of activity. As a member of the Akron Art Museum, you will receive an invitation to our upcoming Annual Meeting on September 23. The event will offer a recap of the past year of activities; programs and events as well as offer an inside look into the upcoming exhibition season and to hear about the future direction of the museum’s strategic initiatives and public programs. If you’re not a museum member, here is your chance to sign up today, get plugged and join us at the event. To become an Akron Art Museum member, please give us a call at 330.376-9186 ext. 225 and speak to one our membership associates today. You’ll be glad to know that your contribution allows us to accomplish our goal of enriching lives through modern and contemporary art.
A is for the Akron (Art Museum) and as a 21st century art museum, we are dedicated to promoting the understanding that creativity is an essential component to the development of a vibrant and engaged community. As a community leader, I have the responsibility to stay on the leading edge of innovation, civic engagement and cultural advancement to lead the museum into the future. With your support, we can make great things happen together, in this city we call home.
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