Just a month short of his first anniversary as the Mary W. and Donald R. Clark Director of the Memorial Art Gallery, Jonathan Binstock convenes with Facilities personnel and registrar Monica Simpson, scooting around the Hawks Gallery in brown canvas Oxford sneakers as they mediate the reinstallation of over 60 works from the Contemporary and Modern Art Collection\u2014an understated feature of the museum until Binstock\u2019s inaugural vision to \u201creturn the view\u201d of the last 70 years of art history.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose 70 years will become 100 years and 100 years will become 150 years,\u201d he says. \u201cSo, it\u2019s been quite rewarding to really move the needle in the past ten [or] eleven months by making a few key acquisitions and, I would say, taking advantage of some opportunities that could transform the collection in a significant way.\u201d<\/p>\n
From an Egyptian terracotta toy boat circa 3,500 BC to a recently acquired 2014 portrait by African American multimedia artist Mickalene Thomas, a visit to the art gallery is to a realm where humanity\u2019s artistic expressions are made relative over five millennia of visual and material culture. Cross the glass threshold into the Forman Gallery and a new salon-style arrangement by curator Nancy Norwood features portraits spanning 500 years that surround and return the viewer\u2019s gaze.<\/p>\n
Conventional museum distinctions converge hard and fast\u2014geography by time\u2014but Binstock expects patrons will experience, rather, the dynamism of history through art. \u201cThere\u2019s change, of course, through the centuries, and there\u2019s continuity,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd giving our visitors sign posts along the road, touch points\u2014physical, actual touch points\u2014with which to think through these issues of continuity and change, and how history unfolds, is really what we are striving for.\u201d<\/p>\n
Acquiring and displaying world art from the last 70 years presents viewers with expanding notions of what art is<\/em> and can be<\/em>, comparing the classical or \u201ctraditional\u201d with more overt sociocultural issues that can bloom in the context of modern works.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it depends on the viewer when you try to make distinctions of what\u2019s more challenging,\u201d says Binstock.<\/p>\n A classically rendered figurative painting, for example, may be as challenging to one viewer as an abstract conceptual piece may be to another.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, it\u2019s a very subjective question … It\u2019s very important that we give some aspect of our purview all the love and attention that we can because every aspect of our purview will relate [to] or engage someone. And so if you disregard one area, you\u2019re potentially disregarding the people out there who would be engaged in that way\u2026\u201d Thus, Binstock and the curatorial staff provide viewers with the thinking space for art works to speak for themselves.<\/p>\n Key acquisitions showing in the Hawks and Wilson galleries include a portrait of postwar jazz paragon Charlie Parker by painter Beauford Delaney\u2014confidant and mentor to writer James Baldwin; another is a painted portrait on a vase by transgender artist Grayson Perry, exploring the idealizations of the \u201cheterosexual couple\u201d with a twist. Perry\u2019s portrait is of a divorced English family who share in each other\u2019s lives through their love of ballroom dancing. Binstock says that the vase is about \u201ca family that\u2019s divided, but in some respects, it\u2019s a family that\u2019s more tightly knit than many families,\u201d\u2014even those without parental separation.<\/p>\n An evocative, self-illuminated work by African-American sculptor and performance artist Nick Cave features a found object of vernacular furniture\u2014a wooden piano stool depicting the buckling figure of a young African-American man\u2014raised from the ground by a modern stool, as if displayed on its own pedestal. Above the piano stool, the artist built a tangle of chandelier crystals and rosary beads festooned with ceramic birds, flowers, and decorative floral ephemera. The piece in its entirely invites the viewer to consider the new veneration of the contorted figure, once crushed beneath the weight of someone else\u2019s musical pastime.<\/p>\n Binstock envisions a museum for visitors to see themselves and their lives reflected on the walls. \u201cWe want for everyone to feel welcome, to feel a part of this place,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n The opening event for the Modern and Contemporary Collection reinstallations will be August 27 as a special MAG Thursday. Student admission is free.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Acquiring and displaying world art from the last 70 years presents viewers with expanding notions of what art is and can be, comparing the classical or \u201ctraditional\u201d with more overt sociocultural issues that can bloom in the context of modern works.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1372,"featured_media":115782,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13092],"tags":[936],"class_list":["post-115762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-arts","tag-memorial-art-gallery"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n