CONTACT: Judy Moore at (847) 491-4819 or jkm229@northwestern.edu

September 18, 2003

September/October 2003 Visual Arts Calendar

Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art: 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston campus. The new museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The museum is closed on Monday. Admission is free. For information regarding Block Museum exhibitions, programs or location, phone (847) 491-4000. Or go to the Block Museum Web site at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu.

The Block Museum has five gallery spaces for patrons to view multiple exhibitions. In addition to the Main Gallery and the Alsdorf Gallery, the building can accommodate a broad range of educational opportunities by means of the 150-seat James B. Pick and Rosalyn M. Laudati Auditorium, the Ellen Philips Katz and Howard C. Katz Gallery/Classroom, the Print, Drawing and Photography Study Center, and the Theo Leffmann Gallery.

FALL PREVIEW PARTY

Fall Preview Party, 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 25, Block Museum. The Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art’s fall preview party celebrates three of the fall 2003 exhibitions: “Drawn toward the Avant-Garde,” “Old Master Drawings from the Collection” and “Up To and Including Her Limits.” The evening will conclude with Block Cinema’s 8 p.m. presentation of the classic horror film, “The Thing from Another World,” with an introduction by Northwestern University Associate Professor of Performance Studies Paul Edwards. The preview party is free and open to the public. Block Cinema admission for the general public is $6, or $4 for Block Museum members or students with identification.

BLOCK FALL EXHIBITIONS

“Drawn Toward the Avant-Garde: Nineteenth and Twentieth Century French Drawings from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Copenhagen,” Sept. 26 through Nov. 30, Main Gallery. Paris, center of artistic experimentation and production during the 19th and 20th centuries, was a focal point of the European art world. This exhibition showcases 80 rarely exhibited drawings by Ingres, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Matisse, Picasso and others. It provides an elegant survey, tracing the intersections between traditional media and modern interpretations. This exhibition has been organized and circulated by Art Services International, Alexandria, Va.

“Old Master Drawings from the Collection: Traditional Drawing Practices in European Art,” Sept. 26 through Nov. 30, Print, Drawing and Photography Study Center. This exhibition highlights the Block Museum’s collection of Northern European and Italian drawings from the 16th and 17th centuries. Many were donated to the University in the early 1960s by Mr. and Mrs. Norman Pritchard and have not been on display for more than 20 years. This collection offers an excellent opportunity to consider traditional practices in European drawings.

“Up To and Including Her Limits,” Sept. 26 through Dec. 14, Ellen Philips Katz and Howard C. Katz Gallery/Classroom. Carolee Schneemann is a pioneering, taboo-breaking multidisciplinary artist who transformed the discourse on the body, sexuality and gender. This site-specific installation is based on her performances from 1973 to 1976 in which Schneemann, suspended naked from a tree surgeon’s harness, created a dense web of markings akin to Jackson Pollock’s action painting.

“Honoré Daumier: Public and Private Domains,” Oct. 4 through Dec. 14, Alsdorf Gallery. Honoré Daumier’s work straddles the spheres of journalism, fine art, caricature and satire to make critical, incisive and humorous commentary that attacked government officials, the bourgeoisie, and everyone in between. The exhibition draws upon the recent gift of more than 350 Daumier lithographs donated by Sidney and Vivian Kaplan.

ONGOING EXHIBITION

“Theo Leffmann: Weaving a Life into Art,” ongoing exhibition that re-opens Sept. 26, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Theo Leffmann Gallery. Theo Leffmann is recognized as a rich contributor to the American fiber art movement in the late 20th century. For more than 30 years, she liberated textiles from practical and decorative applications by using them as a means of personal expression. The Theo Leffmann Gallery is dedicated to Leffmann’s work and highlights selections from the more than 75 fiber constructions by Leffmann in the Block Museum’s permanent collection.

EXHIBITION TOURS

Exhibition Tours, 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Oct. 4 through Dec. 14. Docent-led tours of the four fall exhibitions will be held at 2 p.m. on the following weekends: Oct. 4-5, Oct. 11-12, Oct. 18-19, Oct. 25-26, Nov. 1-2, Nov. 8-9, Nov. 15-16, Nov. 22-23, Nov. 29-30, Dec. 6-7 and Dec. 13-14. Reservations are not required. To schedule a private or group tour for your organization or school, call the educational department at (847) 491-4852.

LECTURES

“Addressing Media,” W.J.T. Mitchell, 5:15 to 7:15 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 9, Block Museum, James B. Pick and Rosalyn M. Laudati Auditorium. W.J.T. Mitchell, professor at the University of Chicago, will survey media theory from McLuhan through Baudrillard, Kittler and Luhmann, attempting to describe the limits of a general theory of media in arts and communication. Sponsored by Northwestern’s departments of art history and English, the Program in the Study of the Imagination, the Alice Berline Kaplan Center for the Humanities, the Simeon F. Leland Fund, the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art and Block Cinema.

“Daumier’s Sad Clowns,” Stephen Eisenmann, 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 15, Block Museum, James B. Pick and Rosalyn M. Laudati Auditorium. Stephen Eisenman, professor of art history at Northwestern, will discuss the melancholy theme of the “saltimbanque” in Daumier’s paintings and prints of the 1860s. The “saltimbanques” -- traveling acrobats, musicians and clowns who entertained passing spectators -- were a favorite subject of artists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and a recurring metaphor in the work of Daumier.

ARTIST’S LECTURE

”Disruptive Consciousness, “ Carolee Schneemann, 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 29, Block Museum James B. Pick and Rosalyn M. Laudati Auditorium. Carolee Schneemann, a pioneer visual artist since the 1960s, has transformed the dynamics of the body, installation and performance. Schneemann will discuss resistance and radicalization in contemporary art, while presenting a history of her own work. Through recent video and slides, she will examine the unpredictable directives of lived experience, the unconscious, and the materials through which her installations, films and videos take form. Her motives for addressing new technologies, social issues, and the latent cultural taboos surrounding sensuality will be discussed. This program is co-sponsored by the Center for Art and Technology, the Program in the Study of Imagination, and Program in Gender Studies

BLOCK SCULPTURE GARDEN

The sculpture collection of the Block Museum of Art constitutes one of the most significant groupings of modern sculpture in the region. In 1987, Leigh Block, one of the museum’s inaugural donors and a preeminent collector of modern art, bequested a large group of outdoor bronze sculptures to the museum. These pieces formed the core of the collection, which now features monumental sculptures by some of the 20th century’s most renowned European and American sculptors. They include Jean (Hans) Arp, Barbara Hepworth, Jacques Lipchitz, Joan Miró and Henry Moore.

In 1989, the museum opened its Sculpture Garden with nine of the monumental bronzes donated by Block. The Sculpture Garden was designed by Chicago architect John Vinci and has grown to 22 pieces through donations and acquisitions. Profiles of the artists and their works, and a brochure detailing the sculpture collection, are available online on the Block Museum Web site at www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/exhibitions/sculpture.html. The Sculpture Garden is open year-round. To arrange a free, docent-guided tour of the Sculpture Garden, call the educational department at (847) 491-4852.

DITTMAR MEMORIAL GALLERY

Dittmar Memorial Gallery: Norris University Center, 1999 Campus Drive, Evanston campus. The gallery is open from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Admission is free.

The Dittmar Memorial Gallery places emphasis on ethnic cultural art, art by emerging artists, art by or about women, artwork by Northwestern undergraduate and graduate art students and traveling art shows.

For information, call the Dittmar Gallery at (847) 491-2348 or Norris University Center at (847) 491-2300, or go to the Norris Center Web site at www.northwestern.edu/norris/dittmar.html.

“Drawings,” an exhibition by Michael Hopkins, Sept. 14 through Oct. 19, Dittmar Memorial Gallery. The untitled series of drawings on plastic (2002-03), created by a trial and error application process of acrylic paint, are inspired by Japanese and Chinese calligraphy. Artist Michael Hopkins wanted the drawings to show strong evidence of the hand at work, each piece having a distinctive character to the mark. At only 10-by-5 inches, each drawing allows the viewer to have an intimate, one-on-one experience with the pieces included in “Drawings.” An opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 25, is free and open to the public.

“de-familiarization,” an exhibition by Sung Jae Bang, Oct. 24 through Dec. 7, Dittmar Memorial Gallery. Artist Sung Jae Bang, who creates works of mixed media, takes familiar things and transforms them into bizarre circumstances in order to trigger associations between those images and the viewer’s experiences. Through the concept of de-familiarization, viewers will find pleasure between the real and twisted elements of the image-flooded world we live in. An opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 30, is open to the public.