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Zimmerli Museum Sets Fall Exhibition Schedule
The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University has announced its fall exhibition schedule.
Beginning September 2 and running through November 21 will be an exhibit of more than 40 works by Jewish artists titled "Soviet Artists, Jewish Imagery: Selections from the Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union."
The variety of Jewish themes explored by such diverse artists as Grisha Bruskin, Anatolii Kaplan, Vitaly Komar, Alexander Melamid, Leonid Lamm, Dmitri Lion, and Alek Rapoport range from nostalgic evocations of old-fashioned life in rural villages to scenes evoking the Holocaust and mystical excursions based on Kabbalistic texts. Some works are meant to amuse, others are melancholic, still others appear as challenges to the Soviet regime. The styles and attitudes presented are similarly diverse.
The exhibit offers no single point of view but rather a variety of works embodying different approaches to Jewish themes and, for the artists, varied ways of pursuing their Jewish identities through their art.
Also beginning September 2, and running through January 4, 2004, will be two exhibits‹"The Illustrator's World: The Art of Maginel Wright Barney," and "In Focus: Cartoon-ography."
Maginel Wright Enright Barney (1881-1966) earned recognition throughout her career as an illustrator of children's literature and parent- and child-oriented publications. Her earliest children's book illustrations, published during the first decade of the 20th century, complemented the stories of Laura Bancroft, a pen name of L. Frank Baum, creator of The Wizard of Heidi Oz. Her later illustrations could be found in such children's classics as and Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates.
Ms. Barney's artistic endeavors incorporate her experiences as the daughter of enterprising Welsh-American parents, the sister of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and parent of Newberry Award-winning author and children's book illustrator Elizabeth Enright. The exhibit, comprising original illustrations and archival materials from the artist's family, reveals not only the artist's versatility as an illustrator but also the influence of her family, upbringing, and travels.
The relationship between "popular culture" and "high art" has been an ongoing topic of debate since the advent of modernism in the mid-19th century. Pop Art is one of the most prominent visual styles to engage this subject directly, but in the past two decades, the use of imagery and styles from the worlds of popular illustration, cartoons and comic books has also enjoyed increased popularity. "In Focus: Cartoon-ography" offers a sampling of such art along with related works from the late 19th century.
As examples of the theme's range, the exhibition includes an illustration by Pierre Bonnard for Alfred Jarry's Pere Ubu; a view of urban life by Red Grooms; and a sculptural multiple by Takashi Murikami, an important figure in the contemporary Japanese art movement influenced by the visual style of animated film. The Zimmerli Art Museum is located at 71 Hamilton Street, New Brunswick.