Tag: Installation
Venice Biennale, Part Three
Chief Curator Janice Driesbach recently travelled to Italy where she experienced the Venice Biennale 55th International Art Exhibition. This is the third post in a series of three. Read the first post here and the second post here. Venice is awash with tourists, although we had a nice conversation with a native Venetian one day. Among visitors, Italian seems to be the predominant language, followed by German. British and Australians are numerous among English speakers. An English couple we encountered directed us to the Richard
Venice Biennale, Part One
Chief Curator Janice Driesbach recently traveled to Italy where she experienced the Venice Biennale 55th International Art Exhibition. Our first afternoon we made our way via a short vaporetto ride and on foot to two of the collateral Biennale exhibitions—both in palazzi (palace-like buildings) along the Grand Canal. We saw a section of Glasstress: White Light/White Heat in elegant rooms, each adorned with amazing chandeliers (most of which were part of the original decor, it seemed). Rina Banjeree‘s multimedia installation (photo below) was a highlight
This is Real! Installing Real/Surreal at the Akron Art Museum
By: Liz Carney, Curatorial Assistant Have you ever wondered what happens behind closed gallery doors when the museum is changing its exhibitions? Lots of work goes into installing an exhibition. Most importantly, it takes a lot of time and care to take works of art from their crates to the gallery walls. Each artwork comes in its own travel frame, which is specially padded and shaped to fit it. Paintings are usually bolted to the bottom of their travel frames to keep them from shifting
Preparing for Real/Surreal
By: Janice Driesbach, Chief Curator This week, painters came in to work on one of the galleries where we are installing Real/Surreal , changing the walls from white to dark blue and gray. For much of the past month, Joe Walton (our Chief Preparator and Exhibition Designer) and Chris Ross (Preparator) have been working with curators to determine the design of our installation. Part of that process involves painting color samples and placing them in a ½-inch scale model of the museum’s galleries. This allows
Real/Surreal is Coming Soon
By: Janice Driesbach, Chief Curator It’s just over four weeks before Real/Surreal opens and Akron Art Museum curatorial, education and design staff have been planning the installation for months. Although the exhibition is organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, we are personalizing it for our Akron visitors. Our efforts respond to input we received from our constituents in surveys and a focus group last fall. We learned our visitors are interested in knowing about the historic context in which the artists were working,
Gravity and Grace Travels to Brooklyn, NYC
By: Arnold Tunstall, Collections Manager We’ve begun the next phase of our El Anastui exhibition, Gravity and Grace – after its premiere here in Akron. Since the exhibit closed last October, the staff has been working nearly every day to prepare it for the national tour. Our preparators re-designed existing crates, new ones and developed packing methods. And I went to Brooklyn to assist with the installation. Watching Brooklyn Museum’s curatorial team re-imagine some of the works was very exciting. A few pieces were literally
Behind the Scenes: Installation of “New Artifacts”
By: Danielle Meeker, Curatorial Assistant Does looking at these photographs of the exhibition New Artifacts: Works by Brent Kee Young and Sungsoo Kim make you curious about the installation process? We started planning the installation of New Artifacts over the summer. At the time, several works in the show were still in progress, so we had to base our layout on the artists’ estimates for the works’ dimensions. We made several studio visits to check on the progress of the artwork and then came up
Studio Glass Movement
Take a peek inside a glass studio in this short video chronicling the humble beginnings of the Studio Glass Movement in a Toledo, Ohio garage under the guidance of Harvey Littleton and Dominick Labino. Learn more about the rise of the studio glass workshop in 1962 and get a look at several beautiful pieces made throughout the history of the movement. Stop into the museum to view our collection of glass sculptures by Paul Stankard and current exhibition New Artifacts: Works by Brent Kee Young
The Q Is Blue!
By Corey Jenkins, Communications Intern One of the first things visitors to the museum see is Claes Oldenburg’s bright pink sculpture Inverted Q. However if you are Vincent van Gogh, who one vision expert believes suffered from “protanopia,” the Q would appear to be blue. The Chromatic Vision Simulator app for iOS/Android was developed by Japanese vision expert, Kazunori Asad. After viewing some of Van Gogh’s pieces in an exhibition where the lighting and environment was designed to display pieces the way a colorblind person
An Awakening of our Creative Side (Part 1 of 2)
By Jennifer Stavrianou* After recently returning from a trip to New York City, where I got to meet the original art dealer for EL Anatsui’s artwork, I learned that the Akron Art Museum was working on an exhibition of his work. Aggressively, I began hunting for the staff member who could help me become a part of this grand event. My search lead me to Interim Chief Curator Ellen Rudolph who explained that this particular show did not follow the museum’s typical installation pattern because