The Museum of Modern Art will inaugurate its latest transformation on New York City’s Wesr 53^rd Street with Surrounds: 11 Installations, opening in The Steven and Alexandra Cohen Center for Special Exhibitions, in The Peggy and David Rockefeller building, on October 21, 2019. The presentation, spanning the entire sixth floor, presents 11 watershed installations by living artists from the past two decades, all drawn from the Museum’s collection and on view at MoMA for the first time. Each installation will occupy its own gallery, providing an individualized, immersive experience.

Surrounds is organized by Quentin Bajac, former Joel and Anne Ehrenkranz Chief Curator of Photography, Christian Rattemeyer, Harvey S. Shipley Miller Associate Curator for Drawings and Prints, Yasmil Raymond, Associate Curator, Department of Painting and Sculpture, Sean Anderson, Associate Curator, Department of Architecture and Design, and Joshua Siegel, Curator, Department of Film, with the assistance of Lucy Gallun, Associate Curator, Department of Photography, Erica Papernik-Shimizu, Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance, Arièle Dionne-Krosnick, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design, and Taylor Walsh, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints.

Surrounds includes work by Jennifer Allora (American, b. 1974) and Guillermo Calzadilla (Cuban, b. 1971), Sadie Benning (American, b. 1973), Janet Cardiff (Canadian, b. 1957) and George Bures Miller (Canadian, b. 1960), Sou Fujimoto (Japanese, b. 1971), Sheila Hicks (American, b. 1934), Arthur Jafa (American, b. 1960), Mark Manders (Dutch, b. 1968), Rivane Neuenschwander (Brazilian, b. 1967), Dayanita Singh (Indian, b. 1961), Hito Steyerl (German, b. 1966), and Sarah Sze (American, b. 1969).

Each work included in the exhibition was conceived out of different individual circumstances—as a contribution to a biennial, as an element of a larger ongoing body of work, as a response to a classic work of art history, or as a stand-alone work unrelated to others—but the installations are united in their ambition and scope, marking decisive shifts in the careers of their makers and the broader field of contemporary art.

The exhibition is made possible by Bank of America, MoMA’s opening partner.

Generous funding is provided by Agnes Gund.

Leadership contributions to the Annual Exhibition Fund, in support of the Museum’s collection and collection exhibitions, are generously provided by the Kate W. Cassidy Foundation, Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III, Mimi and Peter Haas Fund, Jerry I. Speyer and Katherine G. Farley, Eva and Glenn Dubin, The Sandra and Tony Tamer Exhibition Fund, Alice and Tom Tisch, The David Rockefeller Council, Anne Dias, Kathy and Richard S. Fuld, Jr., Kenneth C. Griffin, Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis, Jo Carole and Ronald S. Lauder, Anna Marie and Robert F. Shapiro, The Keith Haring Foundation, and The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art.

Major contributions to the Annual Exhibition Fund are provided by the Estate of Ralph L. Riehle, Emily Rauh Pulitzer, Brett and Daniel Sundheim, Karen and Gary Winnick, The Marella and Giovanni Agnelli Fund for Exhibitions, Clarissa Alcock and Edgar Bronfman, Jr., Agnes Gund, and Oya and Bülent Eczacıbaşı.

MoMA Audio is supported by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

This fall, the Philadelphia Museum of Art presents Off the Wall: American Art to Wear, (November 10, 2019 – May 17, 2020) a major exhibition that highlights a distinctive American art movement that emerged in the late 1960s and flourished during the following decades. It examines a generation of pioneering artists who used body-related forms to express a personal vision and frames their work in relation to the cultural, historical and social concerns of their time. Focusing on iconic works made during the three decades between 1967 and 1997, the exhibition features over 130 one-of-a-kind works by more than sixty artists. Comprised primarily of selections from a promised gift of Julie Schafler Dale, it will also include works from the museum’s collection and loans from private collections. Off the Wall: American Art to Wear is accompanied by a new publication of the same title, co-published by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Yale University Press.

Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and CEO, said: “This exhibition will introduce to our visitors an exceptionally creative and adventurous aspect of American art which took the body as a vehicle for its expression. We are not only deeply grateful to Julie Dale for her extraordinary gifts and support of the museum but also see this as an opportunity to acknowledge the dynamic role she played in nurturing the growth and development of this movement.”

The champions of Art to Wear during the early years were a few forward-thinking museums, among them New York’s Museum of Contemporary Crafts (Museum of Art and Design), collectors, and galleries such as Sandra Sakata’s Obiko, founded in 1972 in San Francisco, and Julie Schafler Dale’s Julie: Artisans Gallery, which opened the following year on Madison Avenue in New York. For over 40 years, Dale’s gallery was a premier destination for presenting one-of-a-kind wearable works by American artists. Through her gallery installations and rotating window displays, she gave visibility to the Art to Wear movement. In 1986, she brought further recognition to the art form by publishing the seminal book Art to Wear—from which the title of this exhibition is taken—which provided in-depth profiles of artists alongside photographs by Brazilian fashion photographer Otta Stupakoff. Dale’s gallery closed in 2013.

Off the Wall is arranged in nine sections; the titles of some are derived from popular music of the ‘60s and ‘70s to suggest the wide-ranging concerns of the artists. The introductory section, The Times They Are A Changin’ (Bob Dylan, 1964), contains works by Lenore Tawney, Dorian Zachai, Claire Zeisler, Ed Rossbach, and Debra Rapoport to illustrate how textile artists in the late ‘50s and ‘60s liberated tapestry weaving from the wall, adapting it to three-dimensional sculptural forms inspired by pre-Columbian weaving.

In 1969, a group of five students at Pratt Institute studying painting, sculpture, industrial design, multimedia, and graphic design taught each other how to crochet, leading to remarkable outcomes. Janet Lipkin, Jean Cacicedo, Marika Contompasis, Sharron Hedges, and Dina Knapp all created clothing-related forms that they would describe as wearable sculpture, thus establishing a cornerstone of the Art to Wear movement. A highlight in this section is a wool crochet and knit Samurai Top, 1972, by Sharron Hedges, modeled by the young Julie Dale for the book Creative Crochet, authored by two of the artist’s friends, Nicki Hitz Edson and Arlene Stimmel.

The next section, Good Vibrations (Beach Boys, 1966), traces the migration of many of these young artists from the East Coast to the West Coast where they joined California’s vibrant artistic community and connected with Sandra Sakata’s Obiko. A pair of colorful denim hand-embroidered mini shorts by Anna VA Polesny embroidered while traveling conveys this new youthful spirit. Pacific Rim influences are evident in the Japanese kimono form as a blank canvas offering infinite possibilities for pattern and design. Katherine Westpahl’s indigo blue resist-dyed cotton work, A Fantasy Meeting of Santa Claus with Big Julie and Tyrone at McDonald’s, 1978, and Janet Lipkin’s Mexico at Midday, a coat made in 1988 are exceptional examples. A range of counter-culture influences, evoking ceremony and spirituality, pervade this section.

Come Together (The Beatles, 1969) responds to the popular use of assemblage in art-making, especially the use of nontraditional materials. It also looks at the art of performance, reflected in Ben Compton and Marian Clayden’s Nocturnal Moth, 1974, inspired by Federico Fellini’s film La Dolce Vita (1960). “Mother Earth,” a nod to the publication Mother Earth News Magazine, looks to nature and environmental concerns while This Land is Your Land (Woodie Guthrie, 1940) explores iconic American imagery including reference to the American West and Native American cultures. Examples in this section include Joan Ann Jablow’s Big Bird cape, 1977, made entirely of recycled bird feathers, and Joan Steiner’s Manhattan Collar, 1979, which reimagines New York’s skyline in miniature.

Other Worlds explores fantasy and science fiction, two genres that offered young people an escape from the period’s cultural and political upheavals. Noteworthy here are works by Jean Cacicedo and Nina Huryn, both of whom riff on one of the most widely read English language books at the time, J.R.R. Tolkien’s trilogy Lord of the Rings (1965). Cacicedo responded with a portrait of Treebeard, 1973, a Tolkien character, while Huryn created her own fantasy world in Tree Outfit, with its flowing pants, loose shirt and leather sleeveless jacket containing forest and folklore imagery, a work made especially for Julie: Artisans Gallery in 1976. Other artists turned to dreams, such as Susanna Lewis, who created Moth Cape, 1979, in response to a nightmare that she had of a giant moth enveloping her body.

A section called I Am Woman (Helen Reddy, 1971) underscores the ways in which artists invoked feminism directly and indirectly in Art to Wear. Janet Lipkin, for example, invested her works with symbols of freedom while searching for new directions in her life, as seen in Bird Coat, 1972, Flamingo, 1982, and Transforming Woman, 1992. Other works like Combat Vest, 1985, by Sheila Perez, feature plastic toy soldiers as protective armor for the chest area, while Nicki Hitz Edson’s Medusa Mask, 1975, is a wild expression of fraught emotions surrounding the breakup of her marriage.

Colour My World (Chicago, 1970) reflects the buoyant rainbow color spectrum that was ubiquitous during this era. Recently published works on color theory by Johannes Itten and Josef Albers provided a cornerstone of the new art education. For Linda Mendelson, color, typography, and text became inseparable. She adapted Albers’s ideas relating to after-images in Big Red, and linked color progression with lines from a poem titled Coat by William Butler Yeats from which she drew inspiration. Other artists such as Tim Harding created an effect similar to impressionist brush strokes by slashing and fraying dyed fabrics, as seen in his colorful coat Garden: Field of Flowers, 1991.

The final section Everybody’s Talkin’ (Harry Nilsson, 1969) explores the use of text in Art to Wear. JoEllen Trilling engages in visual word play using common prepositions on a jacket, while Jean Cacicedo channels her grief over her father’s death using words taken from the bible that celebrated his life in My Father’s House, 1994.

Dilys Blum, The Jack M. and Annette Y. Friedland Senior Curator of Costumes and Textiles, who organized the exhibition, said: “We are looking back at this period with a fresh lens through which to consider a uniquely American art form that continues to have a worldwide influence. With roots and connections in fine arts, fiber art, craft, performance and fashion, there are so many important artists to appreciate. For this reason I am delighted by the opportunity to cast a light on such extraordinary talents, including so many adventurous women who deserve much greater recognition.”

Off the Wall: American Art to Wear is accompanied by a new publication of the same name co-published the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Yale University Press, co-authored by exhibition curators Dilys E. Blum, The Jack M. and Annette Y. Friedland Senior Curator of Costumes and Textiles at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and independent textile scholar and curator Mary Schoeser, with a contribution written by Julie Schafler Dale. The volume provides the social, political, and artistic context for Art to Wear. ISBN 9780876332917.

Curators: Dilys Blum, The Jack M. and Annette Y. Friedland Senior Curator of Costume and Textiles and Mary Schoeser, Independent Textile Historian and Curator

This exhibition has been made possible by Julie Schafler Dale, PNC, The Coby Foundation, the Arlin and Neysa Adams Endowment Fund, Catherine and Laurence Altman, the Center for American Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and other generous donors.

Designs for Different Futures is organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

The role of designers in shaping how we think about the future is the subject of a major exhibition that will premiere at the Philadelphia Museum of Art this fall. Designs for Different Futures (October 22, 2019–March 8, 2020) brings together some 80 works that address the challenges and opportunities that humans may encounter in the years, decades, and centuries ahead. Organized by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and the Art Institute of Chicago, Designs for Different Futures will be presented at the Walker (September 12, 2020–January 3, 2021) and the Art Institute of Chicago (February 6–May 16, 2021) following its presentation in Philadelphia.

Among the questions today’s designers seek to answer are: What role can technology play in augmenting or replacing a broad range of human activities? Can intimacy be maintained at a distance? How can we negotiate privacy in a world in which the sharing and use of personal information has blurred traditional boundaries? How might we use design to help heal or transform ourselves, bodily and psychologically? How will we feed an ever-growing population?

While no one can precisely predict the shape of things to come, the works in the exhibition are firmly fixed on the future, providing design solutions for a number of speculative scenarios. In some instances, these proposals are borne of a sense of anxiety, and in others of a sense of excitement over the possibilities that can be created through the use of innovative materials, new technologies, and, most importantly, fresh ideas.

Timothy Rub, the George D. Widener Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, stated: “We often think of art museums as places that foster a dialogue between the past and the present, but they also can and should be places that inspire us to think about the future and to ask how artists and designers can help us think creatively about it. We are delighted to be able to collaborate with the Walker Art Center and the Art Institute of Chicago on this engaging project, which will offer our visitors an opportunity to understand not only how designers are imagining—and responding to—different visions of the futures, but also to understand just how profoundly forward-looking design contributes in our own time to shaping the world that we occupy and will bequeath as a legacy to future generations.”

Thinking about the future has always been part of the human condition. It has also been a perennial field of inquiry for designers and architects whose speculations on this subject—ranging from the concrete to the whimsical—can profoundly affect how we imagine what is to come. Among the many forward-looking projects on view, visitors to Designs for Different Futures will encounter lab-grown food, robotic companions, family leave policy proposals, and textiles made of seaweed.

“Some of these possibilities will come to fruition, while others will remain dreams or even threats,” said Kathryn Hiesinger, the J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Family Senior Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700, who coordinated the exhibition in Philadelphia with former assistant curator Michelle Millar Fisher. “We’d like visitors to join us as we present designs that consider the possible, debate the inevitable, and weigh the alternatives. This exhibition explores how design—understood expansively—can help us all grapple with what might be on the horizon and allows our imaginations to take flight.”

The exhibition is divided into 11 thematic sections. In Resources, visitors will encounter an inflatable pod measuring 15 feet in diameter, part of the work Another Generosity first created in 2018 by Finnish architect Eero Lundén and designed in this incarnation in collaboration with Ron Aasholm and Carmen Lee. The pod slowly expands and contracts in the space, responding to changing levels of carbon dioxide as visitors exhale around it, and provoking questions about the ongoing effect of the human footprint on the environment.

The section titled Generations will explore ways in which the choices we make today may contribute to the well-being or suffering of those who come after us. Here, visitors will find a model of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, a repository that stores the world’s largest collection of crop seeds. Located within a mountain on a remote island near the Arctic Circle, the facility is designed to withstand natural or human-made disasters. The Earths section of the exhibition speculates on the challenges of extra-terrestrial communication in Lisa Moura’s Alien Nations installation and showcases typeface from the 2016 science-fiction film Arrival.

In Bodies, designers grapple with choices about how our physical and psychological selves might look, feel, and function in different future scenarios. Featured here is one of the world’s lightest and most advanced exoskeletons, designed to help people with mobility challenges remain upright and active. Also notable is the CRISPR Kit, an affordable and accessible gene-editing toolbox, which has the potential to revolutionize biomedical research and open opportunities for gene therapy and genetic engineering.

Intimacies is a section that explores how technologies and online interfaces may affect love, family, and community. Here, urban experiences of sex and love are the focus of Andrés Jaque’s Intimate Strangers, an audio-visual installation focusing on the gay dating app. Through internet-enabled devices, designers explore the possibility of digitally mediated love and sex, suggesting what advanced digital networks hold for human sexuality.

Foods contains projects that explore the future of the human diet. Among them is a modular edible-insect farm, Cricket Shelter, by Terreform ONE, which offers a ready source of protein for impending food crises. A kitchen installation suggests how technology and design may contribute to new modes of food production, including an Ouroboros Steak made from human cells.

Additional sections of the exhibition will focus on the future of Jobs and how Cities will function and look 100 years from now—with robotic baby feeders, driverless cars, and other developments—affording a glimpse at how we might navigate living beyond this planet. Shoes grown from sweat are among the innovations visitors will find in a section devoted to Materials, while Power will look at how design may affect our citizenship and help us retain agency over such essentials as our DNA, our voices, and our electronic communications in a future where the lines between record-keeping, communication, and surveillance blur. Data acknowledges and questions the different ways that information might be collected and used, with all its inherent biases and asymmetries, to shape different futures.

The curatorial team is comprised of: at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Kathryn B. Hiesinger, The J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Family Senior Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700, and Michelle Millar Fisher, formerly The Louis C. Madeira IV Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700; At the Walker Art Center, Emmet Byrne, Design Director and Associate Curator of Design; and at the Art Institute of Chicago, Maite Borjabad López-Pastor, Neville Bryan Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design, and Zoë Ryan, the John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design. Consulting curators are Andrew Blauvelt, Director, Cranbrook Art Museum, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and Curator-at-Large, Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Colin Fanning, Independent Scholar, Bard Graduate Center, New York; and Orkan Telhan, Associate Professor of Fine Arts (Emerging Design Practices), University of Pennsylvania School of Design, Philadelphia.

Kathryn B. Hiesinger is the J. Mahlon Buck, Jr. Family Senior Curator of European Decorative Arts after 1700 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Her work focuses on decorative arts and design from the mid-nineteenth century to the present and includes the exhibitions and publications Zaha Hadid: Form in Motion (2011), Out of the Ordinary: The Architecture and Design of Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown and Associates (2001), Japanese Design: A Survey since 1950 (1994) and Design since 1945 (1983).

Michelle Millar Fisher is the Ronald C. and Anita L Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She is a graduate of the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and is currently completing her doctorate in architectural history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the co-author, with Paola Antonelli, of Items: Is Fashion Modern? (2017).

Emmet Byrne is the Design Director and Associate Curator of Design at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. He provides creative leadership and strategic direction for the Walker in all areas of visual communication, branding, publishing, while overseeing the award-winning in-house design studio. He was one of the founders of the Task Newsletter in 2009 and is the creator of the Walker’s Intangibles platform.

Maite Borjabad López-Pastor is the Neville Bryan Assistant Curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago. She is an architect and curator educated at the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid and Columbia University, New York. She is the author and curator of Scenographies of Power: From the State of Exception to the Spaces of Exception (2017). Her work revolves around diverse forms of critical spatial practices, operating across architecture, art, and performance.

Zoë Ryan is the John H. Bryan Chair and Curator of Architecture and Design at the Art Institute of Chicago. She is the editor of As Seen: Exhibitions That Made Architecture and Design History (2017) and curator of In a Cloud, in a Wall, in a Chair: Six Modernists in Mexico at Midcentury (2019) and the 2014 Istanbul Design Biennial, The Future is Not What it Used to Be. Her projects explore the impact of architecture and design on society.

Centered on the innovative contemporary design objects, projects, and speculations of the exhibition’s checklist, the accompanying volume proposes design as a means through which to understand, question, and negotiate individual and collective futures, giving provocative voice to the most urgent issues of today. It asks readers to contemplate the design context within broader historical, social, political, and aesthetic spectrums. Designs for Different Futures addresses futures near and far, exploring such issues as human-digital interaction, climate change, political and social inequality, resource scarcity, transportation, and infrastructure.

The primary authors are Kathryn B. Hiesinger, Michelle Millar Fisher, Emmet Byrne, Maite Borjabad López-Pastor, and Zoë Ryan, with Andrew Blauvelt, Colin Fanning, Orkan Telhan, Juliana Rowen Barton, and Maude de Schauensee. Additional contributions include texts by V. Michael Bove Jr. and Nora Jackson, Christina Cogdell, Marina Gorbis, Srećko Horvat, Bruno Latour, Marisol LeBrón, Ezio Manzini, Chris Rapley, Danielle Wood, LinYee Yuan, and Emma Yann Zhang; and interviews with Gabriella Coleman, Formafantasma (Andrea Trimarchi and Simone Farresin), Aimi Hamraie and Jillian Mercado, Francis Kéré, David Kirby, Helen Kirkum, Alexandra Midal, Neri Oxman, and Eyal Weizman.

Designs for Different Futures will be distributed by Yale University Press. The book was overseen by Philadelphia Museum of Art publishing director Katie Reilly and editors Katie Brennan and Kathleen Krattenmaker. It is designed by Ryan Gerald Nelson, Senior Graphic Designer at the Walker Art Center, under the direction of Walker design director Emmet Byrne.

Futures Therapy Lab

As part of the exhibition, visitors to the Philadelphia Museum of Art galleries will also encounter a space for community meetups, public programs, school visits, and self-directed activities. The Futures Therapy Lab will weave personal connections between visitors and the exhibition as part of a collaboration between the museum’s Education Department and the curatorial team. Weekly programs, many of which will occur on Pay-What-You-Wish Wednesday Nights, will connect visitors with designers, artists, and locally based creatives. The Futures Therapy Lab will contain a crowdsourced Futures Library that includes everything from science-fiction books to the exhibition catalogue. “Thinking about possible futures is both exhilarating and anxiety-provoking,” said Emily Schreiner, the Zoë and Dean Pappas Curator of Education, Public Programs. “The Futures Therapy Lab is a place for conversation, critique, and creativity in which visitors can imagine their own hopes, fears and solutions for the future through reflection, discussion, and art making.”

View Full Schedule of Related Public Programs

In Philadelphia, this exhibition is generously supported by the Annenberg Foundation Fund for Major Exhibitions, the Robert Montgomery Scott Endowment for Exhibitions, the Kathleen C. and John J.F. Sherrerd Fund for Exhibitions, Lisa Roberts and David Seltzer in Honor of Collab’s 50th Anniversary, the Women’s Committee of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Laura and William C. Buck Endowment for Exhibitions, the Harriet and Ronald Lassin Fund for Special Exhibitions, the Jill and Sheldon Bonovitz Exhibition Fund, and an anonymous donor.

Related Programs

The Futures Therapy Lab will host a series of weekly happenings:

Artists in the Lab

Artists and designers share their work through talks, demonstrations, and workshops. Wednesday Nights, 5:00–8:45 p.m.

The Designer is In

Talk it out. One-on-one sessions with local designers offer new perspectives on your everyday life. Thursdays & Saturdays, 2:00–4:00 p.m.

Sci-Fi Sundays

Drop-in readings that explore narratives of the future. Select Sundays, 2:00–3:00pm

Christie’s announces Classic Week in New York, bringing together nine auctions featuring 19th-century European Art, Old Master paintings and sculpture, Antiquities, The Exceptional Sale, and Books and Manuscripts, which is joining the marquee sales week for the first time. Three distinguished private collections will be offered in dedicated sales: The Collection of Dr. Anton Pestalozzi of important Greek and Roman portraiture; The Collection of Lewis and Ali Sanders of superb French furniture and clocks; and a private collection of 17th-century Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings. Sales run from 25–29 October with viewings from 18-28 October. To add to the multidimensional viewing experience at the company’s Rockefeller Center galleries, the creators behind the scent branding agency 12.29 will introduce a bespoke scent evocative of the artworks, adding an olfactory adventure to Classic Week.

Fine Printed Books and Manuscripts Including Americana | October 25 at 11am

The Books and Manuscripts sale marks the first held during Christie’s Classic Week: the twice-yearly auctions will now take place in October and April. The first October auction includes many books auspicious to the season: a first edition Dracula, Frankenstein with a letter by Mary Shelley, horror works by R.L. Stevenson, Oscar Wilde and others, plus a previously unknown broadside naming Edgar A. Poe as editor of Graham’s Magazine. Some of the wide-ranging highlights include The Scott Greenbaum Collection of Literary First Editions, among which is an exceptionally fine copy of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale and many Dashiell Hammett first editions, including The Glass Key in its rare dust jacket; a section devoted to Game Theory, including a small selection of manuscripts from John Forbes Nash, Jr. and the 1994 Nobel Prize Medal the mathematician was awarded; the Brinley copy of America’s first banned book, Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan of 1637; the important works of 17th-century naturalist-artist Maria Sibylla Merian; the Louisiana Purchase Collection of Alonzo J. Tullock; and a manuscript document signed by Willem Kieft, granting land near Coney Island to the first person of Muslim origin to settle in America.

European Art Part I | October 28 at 10am

This carefully curated sale offers 24 lots of masterpiece-level quality from the most well-known artists of 19th century Europe. Highlights include The Soul of the Rose, a magnificent and rare work by John William Waterhouse, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s depiction of his lover Jane Morris as Prosperpine, a stunning example of the pinnacle of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. Franz von Stuck’s haunting Bacchanal, painted in the year the artist was knighted, is strikingly modern and illustrates the connection between this era and 20th century art. Other highlights include exceptional works by Eugène Delacroix, Vilhelm Hammershøi, John William Godward, William Adolphe Bouguereau, Gustave Courbet and Jean-Léon Gérôme among others.

Faces of the Past: Ancient Sculpture from the Collection of Dr. Anton Pestalozzi | October 28 at 11am

Christie’s is honored to present Faces of the Past: Ancient Sculpture from the Collection of Dr. Anton Pestalozzi, a selection of 29 lots of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan works of art formed by the late Zurich-based lawyer and collector. Highlights include a recently-rediscovered Monumental Roman Marble Portrait Head of Alexander the Great, formerly part of the famed collection of ancient sculpture at Marbury Hall, Cheshire, assembled by James Hugh Smith Barry (1746-1801); an imposing Portrait Bust of the Emperor Tiberius; and a captivating 3^rd century Portrait Head of a Woman, possibly Julia Soemias, mother of Emperor Elagabalus. Much of the collection was studied and published by the celebrated Swiss archaeologist Ines Jucker. Faces of the Past represents an important moment to acquire ancient works of art that have not been seen on the international market for decades.

Antiquities | October 28 at 12pm

Christie’s October Antiquities sale features an exciting selection of works from across the ancient world. The sale is lead by two important works sold to benefit the Mougins Museum of Classical Art: an Egyptian Painted Wood Anthropoid Coffin for Pa-Di-Tu-Amun dating to the Third Intermediate Period (945-889 B.C.), and an Egyptian “Blue” Cosmetic Vessel of Bes, dating to the Late Period (Circa 664-404 B.C.). Other highlights include the Wald Dioscuri, a Roman Marble Relief with the Dioscuri, dating to the 2nd century A.D., which depicts the divine twins Castor and Pollux. Other top lots include a powerful Roman Marble Torso of the Diadumenos of Polykleitos from the Collection of Roger Thomas, and a large Greek Gold Oak Wreath.

European Art Part II | October 28 at 2pm

The European Art Part II sale includes a strong selection of paintings and sculptures which reflect the extraordinary diversity of this pivotal period in art history. Leading the sale are beautiful examples of the artists’ styles by Eugen von Blaas and Louis Marie de Schryver. Additional highlights include Émile Munier’s Un Sauvetage, a selection of three works by Orientalist painter Frederick Arthur Bridgman (American 1847-1928), and Edmund Blair Leighton’s My Lady Passeth By. The sale also features works by the Barbizon painters including Leon Lhermitte and Henri Joseph Harpignies, and a strong selection of Scandinavian paintings led by three works by Frits Thaulow. A charming, Impressionist view of Paris by Jean-François Raffaëlli and an impressive Symbolist canvas by Henri Le Sidander round out the sale.

Old Masters: Property from a Private Collection | October 29 at 10am

A single owner collection of 40 remarkable Dutch and Flemish paintings, this sale offers a broad survey of the artistic production of the 17th-century Lowlands. Marked by their exceptional quality and condition, this group presents striking examples by many of the leading artists in the period, including David Teniers II, Jan Steen, Hendrick Goltzius and Jan Lievens. Every genre is represented, with particular emphasis on landscape paintings by such luminaries as Jan van Goyen, Simon de Vlieger and Salomon van Ruysdael.

Old Masters | October 29 at 11am and 2pm

Christie’s Old Masters sale features a curated selection of paintings and sculpture from the early Renaissance to the Baroque, the Dutch Golden Age and the French Revolution. Highlights include Agony in the Garden by Titian and his studio, an Annunciation by Jan de Beer, a beautiful tondo by Lorenzo di Credi, and a striking portrait of Lucien Bonaparte and his mistress by Guillaume Guillon-Lethière. A rare and significant rediscovery is Girodet’s Les Adieux de Coriolan à sa famille. Examples from the 15th-century include works by Neri di Bicci and the Workshop of Dieric Bouts. Sculpture highlights include a group of elegant busts – ranging from a powerful 16th-century Spanish gentleman in marble – to an incredibly rare survival of a pair of early 19th-century pair of classic plaster busts of Paris and Helen from Antonio Canova’s studio.

The Exceptional Sale | October 29 at 11am

Christie’s New York Exceptional Sale is a tightly curated selection of 25 masterworks led this year by Cobham Hall Hadrian, a 7 foot tall Roman marble Statue of the Emperor Hadrian, sold to benefit the Mougins Museum of Classical Art. Top European decorative arts include a Royal Victorian silver centerpiece and a refined neo-classical ebony bureau plat ‘à la grecque’ by Etienne Levasseur of circa 1770. Pieces of esteemed provenance include a remarkable pair of trompe l’oeil-decorated commodes supplied by the celebrated decorating firm Maison Jansen to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor for their South of France retreat the Château de la Cröe; a pair of 17th-century bronze andirons from the Rothschilds’ famed Château de Ferrières; a rare Russian carpet with the crowned monogram of Empress Maria Feodorovna almost certainly supplied for her use at Pavlovsk Palace and probably ordered by Count Grigorii Grigorievich Kushelev, whose wife was lady-in-waiting to the Empress; and an extraordinary and exotic royal Spanish commode supplied to King Carlos III for the ‘Gabinetes de Maderas Finas de Indias’ in the Royal Palace, Madrid. The sale also features Miles Davis’s ‘Moon and Stars’ trumpet and the Hasselblad camera used by famed Hollywood photojournalist Douglas Kirkland to shoot his iconic photos of Marilyn Monroe.

Fifth Avenue Grandeur: Important French Furniture from the Collection of Lewis and Ali Sanders | October 29 at 12pm

Christie’s is delighted to offer Fifth Avenue Grandeur – an exquisitely curated group of 18th-century French furniture and decorative arts from The Collection of Lewis and Ali Sanders. This private collection displays a superb variety of case and seating furniture, carpets, clocks, and mirrors epitomizing the best of 18th-century craftsmanship. Highlights from the sale encompass all the key periods: a Savonnerie carpet and a régulateur by André-Charles Boulle from the rein of Louis XIV; beautiful lacquer and marquetry pieces by Bernard II Van Risenburgh (‘BVRB’), Jacques Dubois, Joseph Baumhauer and Jean-François Oeben from the rococo era of Louis XV; and refined neo-classical works from the Louis XVI period including a remarkable group of clocks, and cabinet pieces by makers such as Adam Weisweiler and Martin Carlin.

35th Annual Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony To Take Place On May 2, 2020 At Public Auditorium In Cleveland, Ohio

Fans can cast their vote for Inductees at Google, Rockhall.com, or the Museum.

All Images courtesy of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

The Rock and Rool Hall of Fame (1100 Rock and Roll Boulevard, Cleveland, Ohio 44114. Phone: 216.781.7625) today announced the nominees for 2020 Induction, and the list includes previous nominees and first-time nominees. Nominees for induction into the Class of 2020 are:

• Pat Benatar
• Dave Matthews Band
• Depeche Mode
• The Doobie Brothers
• Whitney Houston
• Judas Priest
• Kraftwerk
• MC5
• Motörhead
• Nine Inch Nails
• The Notorious B.I.G.
• Rufus featuring Chaka Khan
• Todd Rundgren
• Soundgarden
• T.Rex
• Thin Lizzy

To be eligible for nomination, an individual artist or band must have released its first commercial recording at least 25 years prior to the year of nomination. Nine out of 16 of the Nominees are on the ballot for the first time, including Dave Matthews Band, The Doobie Brothers, Motörhead, The Notorious B.I.G., Pat Benatar, Soundgarden, T.Rex, Thin Lizzy, and Whitney Houston.

Inductees will be announced in January 2020. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame 2020 Induction Ceremony, presented by Klipsch Audio, takes place at Public Auditorium in Cleveland, Ohio on May 2, 2020. The Ceremony is preceded by Induction Week, which includes a special dedication of the 2020 Inductee exhibit, Celebration Day, and other events and activities at the Museum and around town! Ticket on-sale information will be announced later.

Nominee ballots are sent to an international voting body of more than 1,000 artists, historians and members of the music industry. Factors such as an artist’s musical influence on other artists, length and depth of career and the body of work, innovation and superiority in style and technique are taken into consideration.

Nominees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Class of 2020, top to bottom: Kraftwerk, MC5, Motorhead, Nine Inch Nails, T.Rex

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame offers fans the opportunity to participate in the induction selection process. Beginning today and continuing through 11:59 p.m. EST on January 10, 2020, fans can go to Google and search “Rock Hall Fan Vote” or any nominee name plus “vote” to cast a ballot with Google, vote at rockhall.com, or at the Museum in Cleveland. The top five artists, as selected by the public, will comprise a “fans’ ballot” that will be tallied along with the other ballots to choose the 2020 inductees.

Above, The Dave Matthews Band (top) and Todd Rundgren (bottom)

Nominees were announced live on SiriusXM VOLUME channel 106’s “Feedback” morning show today with hosts Nik Carter and Lori Majewski along with Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation President & CEO Joel Peresman.

Rock Hall donors and members get exclusive Induction ticket opportunities. Donate or join by January 31, 2020 to be eligible. Visit rockhall.com/support to learn more.

Klipsch Audio, a leading global speaker and headphone manufacturer, is a strategic partner and presenting sponsor of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, its Induction Ceremony events and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s Main Stage. Klipsch’s renowned products deliver the power, detail and emotion of the live music experience throughout the iconic museum.

Follow the Rock Hall on Facebook (@rockandrollhalloffame), Twitter and Instagram (@rockhall) and join the conversation at #RockHall2020.

New Fellows Welcomed for the 2019–2020 Academic Year

The New-York Historical Society is now accepting applications for its prestigious fellowship program for the 2020–2021 academic year. Leveraging its rich collections that detail American history through the lens of New York City, New-York Historical’s fellowships are open to scholars at various times during their academic careers and provides them with the resources and community to develop new research and publications that illuminate complex issues of the past. The available fellowships include:

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Predoctoral Awards in Women’s History
The two recipients of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Predoctoral Awards in Women’s History should have a strong interest in women’s and public history and the applications of these fields outside the academy. Functioning as research associates and providing programmatic support for New-York Historical’s Center for Women’s History, pre-doctoral awardees will assist in the development of content for the Women’s History exhibitions, associated educational curriculum, and on-site experiences for students, scholars, and visitors. They must be currently enrolled students in good standing in a relevant Ph.D. program in the humanities. The Predoctoral Awardees, whose work at New-York Historical may not directly correspond with their dissertation research, will be in residence part time at New-York Historical for one academic year, between September 9, 2020, and August 28, 2021, and will receive a stipend of $20,000 per year. This position is not full time and will not receive full benefits.

Helen and Robert Appel Fellowship in History and Technology
This fellowship will be awarded to a candidate who has earned a Ph.D. no later than 2019. Research projects should be based on New-York Historical’s collections and explore the impact of technology on history. The fellowship will carry a stipend of $60,000, plus benefits. It begins September 9, 2020, and lasts through June 30, 2021.

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship
One fellowship for the length of an academic year is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities for the sake of research at New-York Historical. The fellowship is available to individuals who have completed their formal professional training and have received their final degree or certificate by 2019. They should have a strong record of accomplishment within their field. There is no restriction relating to age or academic status of applicants. Foreign nationals are eligible to apply if they meet visa requirements for working in the U.S. The 10-month residency will carry a stipend of $42,000, plus benefits. This fellowship will begin September 9, 2020 and will end June 30, 2021.

Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation—Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship
This fellowship will be awarded to a candidate who has earned a Ph.D. no later than 2019. Research projects should expand public understanding of New York State and City history and include research based on the collections and resources of New-York Historical. This 10-month residency will carry a stipend of $60,000, plus benefits. It begins September 9, 2020, and lasts through June 30, 2021.

Short Term Fellowships
Several short term fellowships will be awarded to scholars at any academic level working in the Library collections of New-York Historical. Research is to be conducted for two to four weeks for a stipend of between $2,000. The fellowship period will begin July 1, 2020 and end June 29, 2021.

Fellowships at the New-York Historical Society are made possible through the generous endowments of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, and Helen and Robert Appel. Major support for fellowships is provided by Bernard L. Schwartz and the Lehrman Institute. All fellows receive research stipends while in residency. Short term fellowships are made possible by support from Helen Appel, Richard Brown and Mary Jo Otsea, Causeries du Lundi, Patricia Klingenstein, Sid Lapidus, Peck Stacpoole Foundation, Pine Tree Foundation of New York, Pam and Scott Schafler, Society of Colonial Wars, and Society of Daughters of Holland Dames.

Visit nyhistory.org/library/fellowships for instructions and application checklists for each fellowship. The application deadline for all fellowships is January 3, 2020.

2019–2020 Fellows at the New-York Historical Society

New-York Historical is also pleased to announce fellows now in residence during the 2019–2020 academic year. This year’s fellows are:

Schwartz Fellows

Tejasvi Nagaraja comes to New-York Historical from the Charles Warren Center for American History at Harvard University. He is working on a major book project, Soldiers of the American Dream: War Work, Jim Crow and Freedom Movements in the Shadow of U. S. Power. With a Ph.D. from NYU, Nagaraja will continue to work on his project during his tenure at New-York Historical. Based on deep archival research, oral histories, and interviews, Nagaraja’s project documents the racism and discrimination that veterans and others in the war industry faced after WW II. This is Nagaraja’s “greatest generation,” disillusioned and angry black veterans who turned their mounting discontent into the beginnings of the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s. New York is the central node in Nagaraja’s story, a hub of activists and activism, and while he is here he will be using Library materials from the era to finish up his manuscript.

Alexander Manevitz holds a Ph.D. from NYU, where he began work on the project that brings him to New-York Historical: The Rise and Fall of Seneca Village: Remaking Race and Space in 19th-Century New York City. In the centuries old story of the manifold ways in which New York City builds, demolishes, and rebuilds, Seneca Village occupies a unique place. The compelling strength of Manevitz’s project derives from its ability to recast the rise and fall of Seneca Village in terms of gentrification projects today, projects which have the effect of erasing neighborhoods and memories of those neighborhoods. According to Manevitz, Seneca Village was a unique experiment in which African Americans sought to build an experimental community in the face of racism and class tensions. Looking at that community provides a window onto African American attempts to create their own brand of capitalism and urban planning.

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellow

With a Ph.D. from CUNY, Dr. Lauren Santangelo is an accomplished scholar in the field of women’s studies. Her first book, Suffrage and the City: New York Women Battle for the Ballot (Oxford), has been recently published, and some of the research for that book was done at New-York Historical, where Dr. Santangelo was a Schwartz Fellow in 2013-14. Her current project, which will draw on several recently acquired collections, focuses on Ladies Mile and the gendered consumer culture it spawned. Ladies Mile flourished during the Gilded Age, a time of retail innovation, electrification, the introduction of elevators, etc.—all of which inflected the experience of women as an important, new consumer class.

Helen and Robert Appel Fellow in History and Technology Fellow

Devin Kennedy comes out of the Harvard History of Science program, where he worked with Professor Peter Galison. Kennedy’s area of particular interest is the impact of technology on the operations of Wall Street in the 1960s and ’70s. He sees Wall Street as a site of continuous technological innovation and proposes to tell the story of the machines, computer programs, cables, and satellites that rewired Wall Street during that period. In particular, he will be examining the partnership of the NYSE with the American Stock Exchange to rewire lower Manhattan and the development by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD) of an automated quotation and dealer communication system called NASDAQ. He will be making extensive use of New-York Historical’s important oral history project, Remembering Wall Street, 1950-1980.

Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation—Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fellow

With her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, Sarah Miller-Davenport is a Permanent Lecturer in 20th century U. S. history at the University of Sheffield in the UK. Her project seeks to address a crucial conundrum in the history of New York City: with city teetering on the brink of financial and social collapse in the 1970s how and why did New York embark on an ambitious globalist agenda symbolized by the building of the Twin Towers in 1973. Moreover, why was it so successful in this most unlikely of undertakings? Professor Miller-Davenport does not see globalization as an inevitable force with its own dynamic. Rather, the pursuit of global capital by the city was the result of conscious decisions made by politicians, business men, bureaucrats, and analysts. Her work will focus on the actors, their motives, their successes, and failures. Finally she will look at the impact of globalization on the fabric of the city, its diverse peoples, and its neighborhoods.

Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Women’s History and Public History

Anna K. Danziger Halperin completed her doctorate in history at Columbia University in 2018, focusing on comparative social policy, gender, and childhood. She has previously taught at Columbia University and St. Joseph’s College, Brooklyn. Her dissertation, “Education or Welfare? American and British Child Care Policy, 1965-2004,” analyzed child care policies in the turn to neoliberalism in both the U.S. and Britain. As the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, she will be in residence full-time at New-York Historical through 2021, assisting in the programs of the Center for Women’s History.

Andrew W. Mellon Predoctoral Fellows in Women’s History and Public History

Pamela Walker is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at Rutgers University. She specializes in African American History and Women and Gender History. She received a B.A. in History and Journalism from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and an M.A. in History from the University of New Orleans. Pamela’s dissertation, “‘Everyone Must Think We Really Need Freedom’: Black and White Mothers, The Mississippi Box Project, and the Civil Rights Movement,” examines the relationship between motherhood, the black freedom struggle, white benevolence, and political consciousness during the long 1960s.

Caitlin Wiesner is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at Rutgers University, specializing in the history of women, gender, and sexuality in the 20th century United States. She earned her Bachelor of the Arts with Distinguished Honors in History and Women’s & Gender Studies from the College of New Jersey in 2015. Her forthcoming dissertation, “Controlling Rape: Black Women, the Feminist Movement Against Sexual Violence, and the State, 1974-1994,” explores how black women’s anti-rape activity in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and Chicago evolved in response to the state’s growing interest in punishing rape during the War on Crime. In addition to the Mellon Fellowship at New-York Historical, her research has been supported by the Graduate School of New Brunswick, the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis, Rutgers Oral History Archives, Smith College Libraries, and the P.E.O. International.

The New-York Historical Society, one of America’s preeminent cultural institutions, is dedicated to fostering research and presenting history and art exhibitions and public programs that reveal the dynamism of history and its influence on the world of today. Founded in 1804, New-York Historical has a mission to explore the richly layered history of New York City and State and the country, and to serve as a national forum for the discussion of issues surrounding the making and meaning of history. Among the more than 1.6 million works that comprise the museum’s art collections are all 435 preparatory watercolors for John James Audubon’s Birds of America; a preeminent collection of Hudson River School landscapes; and an exceptional collection of decorative and fine arts spanning four centuries.

The Patricia D. Klingenstein Library at the New-York Historical Society is home to over 350,000 books, nearly 20,000 linear feet of manuscripts and archives, and distinctive collections of maps, photographs, and prints, as well as ephemera and family papers documenting the history of the United States from a distinctly New York perspective. The Library’s collections are particularly rich in material pertaining to the American Revolution and the early Republic, the Civil War, and the Gilded Age. Significant holdings relate to Robert Livingston and the Livingston family, Rufus King, Horatio Gates, Albert Gallatin, Cadwallader Colden, Robert Fulton, Richard Varick, and many other notable individuals. Also well documented within the Library’s collections are major social movements in American history, especially abolitionism, temperance, and social welfare. The Library’s visual archives include some of the earliest photographs of New York; a significant collection of Civil War images; and the archives of major architectural firms of the later 19th century.

The Walker Arts Center’s Walker Moving Image program in November features Sound Unseen Opening Night Screening and Live Music, Mark Jenkin‘s Bait, Nietzchka Keene‘s The Juniper Tree, the Annual British Arrows Awards and More. (The Walker Arts Center is located at 725 Vineland Pl, Minneapolis, MN 55403.)

Bait
Friday, November 1 and Saturday, November 2, 7pm
Walker Cinema, $10 ($8 Walker members, students, seniors)

“Stunningly shot on a vintage 16mm camera using monochrome Kodak stock, Mark Jenkin’s Bait is a timely and funny, yet poignant new film that gets to the heart of a community facing unwelcome change.”—British Film Institute

Martin Ward is a cove fisherman, without a boat. His brother Steven has re-purposed their father’s vessel as a tourist tripper, driving a wedge between the brothers. With their childhood home now a get-away for London money, Martin is displaced to the estate above the picturesque harbor. As his struggle to restore the family to their traditional place creates increasing friction with tourists and locals alike, a tragedy at the heart of the family changes his world.

British filmmaker Mark Jenkin made his surprising 2018 breakthrough experimental drama entirely with a hand-cranked Bolex camera on 16mm, black-and-white film that he processed by hand. Jenkin portrays life in an unnamed fishing village in Cornwall with unique depth and beauty. A Brexit-era portrait, rooted in the local culture and community of the southwestern United Kingdom, shows how marginalized places are facing up to a changing world in this hand crafted monochrome expression of a life under threat. 2018, UK, DCP, 89 min. —Mark Jenkin/The Festival Agency

View Trailer
Read Filmmaker Magazine on Mark Jenkin
Read The Guardian review

The Juniper Tree
Wednesday, November 6 and Friday November 8 at 7pm
Saturday, November 9 at 2pm
Walker Cinema $10 ($8 Walker members, students seniors)
Students are free at Wednesday’s screening

“Distinctive, ambitious, and genuinely poetic.” —Los Angeles Times

An unsung talent in her lifetime, director, professor and Fulbright scholar Nietzchka Keene’s stark, stunning debut feature The Juniper Tree is loosely based on a Brothers Grimm fairy tale of the same name, and stars Björk in her first on-screen performance. The film premiered to glowing reviews at the Sundance Film Festival in 1991 and led Keene to further direct Heroine of Hell (1996) starring Catherine Keener and Barefoot to Jerusalem (2008), the latter completed after her tragically early death in 2004.

Set in medieval Iceland, The Juniper Tree follows Margit (Björk in a riveting performance) and her older sister Katla as they flee for safety after their mother is burned to death for witchcraft. Finding shelter and protection a handsome widower and his resentful young son, the sisters help form an impromptu family unit that’s soon strained by Katla’s burgeoning sorcery. Photographed entirely on location in the stunning landscapes of Iceland in spectacular black-and-white by Randy Sellars, The Juniper Tree is a deeply atmospheric film—evocative of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Day of Wrath and Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring—and filled with indelible waking dream sequences (courtesy of legendary experimental filmmaker Pat O’Neill). A potent allegory for misogyny and its attendant tragedies, The Juniper Tree is a major rediscovery for art house audiences. 1990, 4K DCP, 78 min. —Arbelos Films

The new 4K restoration from the original 35mm camera negative and magnetic soundtrack was made by the Wisconsin Center for Film & Theater Research and the Film Foundation, with funding provided by the George Lucas Family Foundation.

Free tickets for students are available at the box office one hour before Wednesday night’s screening.

View Trailer
Read LA Times review
Read Hyperallergic review

Sound Unseen Opening Night
Tuesday, November 12
Live Music: Katy Vernon, 6:30pm
Screening: A Dog Called Money, 7pm
Post-screening reception in the main lobby
Walker Cinema, $20 ($15 Walker members, students, and seniors)
Sound Unseen Film+Music Festival celebrates 20 years of film, music, and art in the Twin Cities. The opening night event includes a live music performance by Katy Vernon on the Walker Cinema Stage starting at 6:30 pm and a postshow reception in the main lobby. Visit Sound Unseen for the full schedule of events and locations.

Alternative-music icon PJ Harvey’s ninth studio album, 2016’s The Hope Six Demolition Project, was created through a unique process that blended travelogue, photography, performance art, and now a documentary feature. It began when Harvey, looking to develop a new set of politically tinged songs that would also evoke a tangible sense of place, decided to accompany award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker Seamus Murphy as he travelled on assignments to war-torn regions in Afghanistan and Kosovo, as well as to the poor, mostly black neighborhoods of Washington, DC. As Murphy filmed, Harvey personally interacted with the members of the different communities and wrote her impressions in a diary, crafting song lyrics and melodies based on the stories she uncovered. Back in London, Harvey and her band experimented with these new songs during a live sound installation called “Recording in Progress” at the distinguished Somerset House, generating an album’s worth of material entirely within a glass-walled recording studio, with members of the public invited to watch. Chronicling the entire project, and even including a handful of songs not on the final album, A Dog Called Money is Murphy’s inspiring, expressionistic document of this unprecedented collaborative experiment. 2019, Ireland/UK, DCP, 90 min. —Clinton McClung, Seattle International Film Festival

Copresented with Sound Unseen.

View Trailer

Strand Releasing 30th-Anniversary Tribute
Thursday, November 21, 6pm
Walker Cinema, Free
Copresident Marcus Hu and filmmaker Gregg Araki in person

30/30 Vision: 3 Decades of Strand Releasing.

One of the leading US distributors of international and independent cinema, Strand Releasing celebrates its 30th anniversary with a special event at the Walker. The company will be exhibiting a series of 30 short films shot around the world on iPhones. Join Strand copresident Marcus Hu and one of Strand’s celebrated filmmakers, Gregg Araki, for a screening of this eclectic compilation.

Artists involved in the project include Andrew Ahn, Karim Aïnouz, Fatih Akin, Catherine Breillat, Roddy Bogawa, Alain Gomis, Alain Guiraudie, Christophe Honoré, Jon Jost, Bruce LaBruce, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Rithy Panh, João Pedro Rodrigues, Ira Sachs, James Schamus, A. B. Shawky, John Waters, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul. More filmmakers to be announced shortly.

Over the past 30 years, Strand has cultivated relationships with auteurs, producers, and sales agents by closely collaborating with them on the presentation of their films in the US marketplace. Having released over 400 films since 1989, the company has maintained an exceptional group of globally recognized filmmakers, making it one of the longest running independent distributors in the United States.

Free tickets are available at the Main Lobby desk from 5 pm.

Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives
Friday November 22 at 7 pm; Saturday, November 23 at 2 pm
Walker Cinema, Free
“Cinema is a way to create an alternate universe, and other lives.” —Apichatpong Weerasethakul

This award-winning, hypnotic tale is an homage to Thailand and the mystical power of cinema. While Uncle Boonmee spends his final days surrounded by loved ones in the countryside, the ghosts of his wife and long-lost son appear. The fluid tale follows the family as they trek through the jungle to a mysterious hilltop cave. 2010, UK/Thailand/France/Germany/Spain, 35mm, in Thai and French with English subtitles, 114 min.

This print is part of a generous donation of 35mm feature films by Strand Releasing to the Walker’s Ruben/Bentson Moving Image Collection.

Free tickets are available at the Main Lobby desk one hour before the screening.

View Trailer
Read National Public Radio’s review
Read Slant review

British Arrows Awards 2019, November 29–December 29

Celebrate the UK’s most innovative and daring commercials from the creative world of British advertising. One of our most popular traditions, back for the 33rd year, the British Arrows showcases an eclectic mix of riveting mini-dramas, high-tech extravaganzas, wacky comedy, and vital public service announcements.

Tickets: Screenings fill up quickly. Tickets go on sale to members Tuesday, October 15, and to the general public Tuesday, October 29; available at walkerart.org/tickets.

Members Get More: Join the Walker as a new member and receive two free tickets to the British Arrows Awards. Visit walkerart.org/membership or call 612.375.7655.

Renovated in 2012, the enhanced 21st-century Walker Cinema is one of the best places to view film in the country. Cinema programs are often presented in combination with guest filmmakers through premieres and series that include the Walker Dialogues & Retrospectives, Filmmakers-in-Conversation, and Cinema of Urgency. Dive deeper at Crosscuts, where you’ll find in-depth articles, interviews, and videos about the moving images you love.

On November 22, the Whitney Museum of American Art opens Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019, an exhibition that foregrounds how visual artists have explored the materials, methods, and strategies of craft. Beginning in the 1950s—at a time when many artists embraced fiber arts and ceramics to challenge the dominance of traditional painting and sculpture—Making Knowing moves through the next seven decades, presenting works that speak to artists’ interests in domesticity, hobbyist materials, the decorative, vernacular American traditions, “women’s work,” and feminist and queer aesthetics.

Drawn primarily from the Whitney’s collection, the exhibition features over eighty artworks in a variety of media, including textiles, ceramics, painting, drawing, photography, video, and large-scale sculptural installation. The more than sixty artists represented include Anni Albers, Richard Artschwager, Ruth Asawa, Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Robert Gober, Shan Goshorn, Harmony Hammond, Eva Hesse, Sheila Hicks, Mike Kelley, Yayoi Kusama, Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt, Simone Leigh, Robert Morris, Claes Oldenburg, Pepón Osorio, Howardena Pindell, Ken Price, Robert Rauschenberg, Faith Ringgold, Miriam Schapiro, Arlene Shechet, Kiki Smith, Lenore Tawney, Peter Voulkos, Marie Watt, and Betty Woodman.

“One of the greatest pleasures and responsibilities that comes with digging into the Whitney’s collection is the way it continually compels us to reevaluate our received ideas about taste, style, and even what counts as art at any moment,” remarks Scott Rothkopf, Senior Deputy Director and Nancy and Steve Crown Family Chief Curator. “By focusing on materials and techniques associated with craft, Making Knowing will offer jolts of surprise, emotion, provocation, and discovery through an incredible range of works, more than half of which have never been on display in our galleries.”

Making Knowing is organized chronologically and thematically, beginning with a gallery of works from the 1950s. Throughout this decade, artists such as Ruth Asawa, Robert Rauschenberg, and Peter Voulkos experimented with wire, scavenged fabric, and clay. Others, including Sheila Hicks, Lenore Tawney, and Ann Wilson, explored weaving, both on and off the loom, and painting on found quilts. By employing marginalized craft media, they challenged the power structures that determined artistic value. Presenting these artists together reveals the profound influence that craft had on abstraction during this period.

Subsequent galleries demonstrate how artists working in the 1960s and 1970s frequently questioned why fine art was more accepted and valued than more vernacular or utilitarian traditions. Among them, Richard Artschwager, Eva Hesse, Yayoi Kusama, Robert Morris, Howardena Pindell, and Alan Shields experimented with unconventional materials such as rope, felt, and string, and in doing so influenced various art historical movements, including Pop Art, Minimalism, and Process art. In Shields’s J + K, 1972, the canvas border creates a satirically legitimizing frame for craft materials like strands of beads.

Making Knowing also highlights modes of making from the 1970s and 1980s frequently categorized as “women’s work.” While this phrase denigrated certain materials and aesthetics associated with femininity, artists purposefully worked in these ways in order to question gender roles in both the art world and society at large. Artists such as Barbara Chase-Riboud, Harmony Hammond, Kim MacConnel, Elaine Reichek, Miriam Schapiro, and Betty Woodman used cloth, embroidery, sewing, and ceramics to elevate the often-disparaged tradition of the “decorative,” and to attest to the impossibility of tethering these techniques to a single use or means of expression.

The works on display from the 1980s and 1990s exemplify how artists during this period looked at art and its relationship to devotional practices and often grappled with an ambivalence towards organized religion. Arch Connelly, Robert Gober, Mike Kelley, Lucas Samaras, Kiki Smith, and Rosie Lee Tompkins used wide-ranging materials including quilts, found and sewn textiles, candles, artificial flowers, and beads in artworks that reveal the relationship between the spiritual and the worldly. Working at the height of the AIDS crisis, several of these artists’ attention to handcrafting objects attempted to provide an emotionally reparative experience in the absence of aid from the government or religious authorities.

A gallery dedicated to artwork from the mid-1990s to the present broadly addresses issues of the body and place. Liza Lou’s monumental installation Kitchen, 1991–1996, is a handmade, life-size kitchen composed of sparkling beads. Through subject matter and materials, Lou combines the physical labor of domestic life and the painstaking making of an artwork. On view for the first time here are recent acquisitions by Shan Goshorn, Kahlil Robert Irving, Simone Leigh, Jordan Nassar, and Erin Jane Nelson.

“Many of the artists in Making Knowing have taken up historically marginalized materials in order to upend hierarchies that have persisted in art history and in museum collecting practices,” explains co-curator Jennie Goldstein. Elisabeth Sherman, co-curator, continues, “Together they demonstrate that craft-informed techniques of making carry their own kind of knowledge, one that is indispensable to a more complete understanding of the history and potential of art.”

Making Knowing offers a fresh look at a prominent, ever-present thread of the Whitney’s collection. The exhibition’s title reformulates the historical tension often separating craft and fine art by leveling the distinction between the world of the handmade, “making,” and the world of ideas, “knowing.”

Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 will be on view beginning November 22, 2019, in the Museum’s sixth-floor collection galleries. The Whitney’s sixth-floor galleries continue to serve as a space to present challenging, thematic exhibitions that explore and rethink various threads of the Museum’s collection. Past sixth-floor collection exhibitions include An Incomplete History of Protest: Selections from the Whitney’s Collection, 1940–2017 (2017–2018) and Programmed: Rules, Codes, and Choreographies in Art, 1965–2018 (2018–2019).

Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 is curated by Jennie Goldstein, assistant curator, and Elisabeth Sherman, assistant curator, with Ambika Trasi, curatorial assistant.

Support for Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 is provided by the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation.

The High Museum of Art has been selected as a 2019 Bank of America Art Conservation Project grant recipient for a project to conserve artwork by renowned contemporary artist Thornton Dial (American, 1928–2016). The High holds the largest public collection of Dial’s work, including paintings and assemblages spanning his entire 30-year career, which represents a cornerstone of the Museum’s unparalleled folk and self-taught art department.

The High is dedicated to supporting and collecting works by Southern artists and is distinguished as the first general art museum in North America to have a full-time curator devoted to folk and self-taught art. The nucleus of the folk and self-taught art collection is the T. Marshall Hahn Collection, donated in 1996, and Judith Alexander’s gift of 130 works by Atlanta artist Nellie Mae Rowe. The High’s folk and self-taught art department features works by such renowned artists as Dial, Bill Traylor, Ulysses Davis, Sam Doyle, William Hawkins, Mattie Lou O’Kelley and Louis Monza as well as the largest collection of works by Georgia’s Howard Finster outside of Paradise Garden in Summerville, Georgia. The collection of more than 1,000 objects also boasts superb examples by celebrated artists from beyond the South, including Henry Darger, Martín Ramírez and Joseph Yoakum.

Dial used a wide range of media, including metals, wood, textiles and plastics. Due to the interactions between these materials, as well as the fact that most are repurposed from previous use, his works require analysis and treatment to improve their condition. In addition, as a master of complexly layered surfaces, Dial created works that are always in danger of loose parts.

With the grant funds, the Museum will conduct a full assessment of these works using analytical and imaging techniques to capture each work’s intricacy and create a baseline understanding of Dial’s fabrication practices and how his materials have deteriorated over time. The groundbreaking conservation project, under the direction of Katherine Jentleson, the High’s Merrie and Dan Boone curator of folk and self-taught art, will focus on treating the Museum’s 10 most complex Dial works, which span nearly two decades. Assessment will begin in November 2019, and conservation will be completed by November 2020.

The High Museum of Art was one of the first museums to acquire Dial’s art, beginning in the 1990s with mixed–media works, including “Struggling Tiger Know His Way Out” (1991), which is the earliest work being treated as part of this project. In 2017, the High received a stunning group of Dial’s assemblage paintings as part of a major gift/purchase from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, including “Birmingham News” (1997) and “Looking Out the Windows” (2002), which will also undergo examination and treatment.

“We believe that Dial is one of the seminal and most defining artists of the 20th century, and it is essential that we preserve his artworks for future generations,” said Rand Suffolk, Nancy and Holcombe T. Greene, Jr., director of the High. “We are incredibly grateful to Bank of America for selecting our conservation project for this grant, which will allow us to give these works their due attention and care.”

The Art Conservation Project is a key element of Bank of America’s program of arts support worldwide and part of the company’s environmental, social and governance program. For more information, please visit the Art Conservation Project website.

“We believe in the power of the arts to help economies thrive, and we are proud to expand our partnership with the High Museum of Art,” said Wendy Stewart, Atlanta market president, Bank of America.

In addition to preserving Dial’s assemblages, the conservation project will also provide the basis for important scholarship on his materials and methods and will establish protocols for the conservation of his work, and for that of the entire spectrum of self-taught artists working in non-traditional mixed media.

“Like many contemporary artists, Dial did not limit himself to traditional materials,” said Jentleson. “I am thrilled that, through Bank of America’s generosity, we will be able to serve Dial’s tremendous legacy but also make discoveries that will inform treatments of complex works by a varied array of artists, both self-taught and trained.”

Located in the heart of Atlanta, Georgia, the High Museum of Art connects with audiences from across the Southeast and around the world through its distinguished collection, dynamic schedule of special exhibitions and engaging community-focused programs. Housed within facilities designed by Pritzker Prize–winning architects Richard Meier and Renzo Piano, the High features a collection of more than 17,000 works of art, including an extensive anthology of 19th- and 20th-century American fine and decorative arts; major holdings of photography and folk and self-taught work, especially that of artists from the American South; burgeoning collections of modern and contemporary art, including paintings, sculpture, new media and design; a growing collection of African art, with work dating from pre-history through the present; and significant holdings of European paintings and works on paper. The High is dedicated to reflecting the diversity of its communities and offering a variety of exhibitions and educational programs that engage visitors with the world of art, the lives of artists and the creative process. For more information about the High, visit www.high.org,

The Museum of Modern Art announces Just Above Midtown: 1974 to the Present, for fall 2022. It will be the first museum exhibition to focus exclusively on Just Above Midtown (JAM), an art gallery and self-described laboratory for African American artists and artists of color that was led by Linda Goode Bryant from 1974 until 1986.

Initially located in the heart of New York’s major commercial gallery district, JAM was founded by Linda Goode Bryant with the explicit purpose of “being in but not of the art world.” By the time JAM closed its doors, it had established itself as one of the most vibrant and influential alternative art spaces in New York, embracing work by abstract, self-taught artists, organizing groundbreaking exhibitions that thematized the idea of mixture in art and society, and fostering critiques of the commercialization of art.

JAM’s legacy continues today through the work of artists it supported early on in their careers, such as David Hammons, Butch Morris, Senga Nengudi, Lorraine O’Grady and Howardena Pindell. The MoMA exhibition will present works previously shown at JAM, in a wide range of mediums. Archival material and artist interventions will contextualize the experimental ethos that defined the gallery. In addition to the expansive exhibition, the project will include performances, screenings, and public programs.

JAM’s founder worked at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Studio Museum in Harlem before founding Just Above Midtown at age 23. After closing the gallery, Goode Bryant dedicated herself to filmmaking, directing the critically acclaimed documentary Flag Wars (2003) with Laura Poitras. In 2009, Goode Bryant started Project Eats, an urban farming initiative for black and brown communities in New York City that, like JAM, uses existing resources to provide cultural sustenance.

Thomas J. Lax, Curator, Department of Media and Performance and organizer of the exhibition explains, “This exhibition acknowledges Just Above Midtown as the efflorescent space where many of the artists who now are recognized as the most important figures of the second half of the 20th century were first supported. This ambitious project not only historicizes JAM’s importance, but also brings its relevance to the present.”

The Museum’s Inaugural Exhibit on Its Newly Constructed Third Floor Showcases Iconic Moments From the Latin GRAMMY Awards®

To celebrate the milestone 20th anniversary of the Latin GRAMMY Awards®, the GRAMMY Museum® proudly presents Latin GRAMMY®, 20 Years Of Excellence. On November 18, the Museum will kick off the opening of the new Latin music exhibit and its new third floor with a full day of programming, including an education program for students, live performances, and a ribbon-cutting ceremony with Gabriel Abaroa Jr., President/CEO of The Latin Recording Academy® and Michael Sticka, President of the GRAMMY Museum, along with prestigious Latin artists and personalities. The evening event is free, including entry to the Museum, and is open to the public on a special first-come, first-served basis. The exhibit will run through spring 2020.

The GRAMMY Museum is a nonprofit organization dedicated to cultivating a greater understanding of the history and significance of music through exhibits, education, grants, preservation initiatives, and public programming. Paying tribute to our collective musical heritage, the Museum explores and celebrates all aspects of the art form—from the technology of the recording process to the legends who’ve made lasting marks on our cultural identity.

Working in collaboration with The Latin Recording Academy, the Museum renovated its third floor in order to expand its Latin-themed exhibits to showcase the power of Latin music as it continues to grow as one of the leading influences worldwide. The third floor officially reopens to the public on Nov. 20.

Latin GRAMMY, 20 Years Of Excellence will highlight a variety of iconic moments and performances from the Latin GRAMMY Awards’ 20-year history and celebrate the accomplishments of various Latin GRAMMY- and GRAMMY-nominated and -winning artists. The exhibit will also include a comprehensive overview of The Latin Recording Academy’s Person of the Year celebrations, highlighting each honoree from the program’s 20-year history. Some of the featured original pieces include artwork, personal items, instruments, media components, and audio playlists.

Latin GRAMMY, 20 Years Of Excellence will be the inaugural exhibition in the Museum’s newly constructed Latin music gallery, which is a result of The Latin Recording Academy committing more than half a million dollars over a three-year period to expand the Museum’s Latin music-focused exhibits and education programs and toward the hiring of a Latin music curator.

The newly renovated third floor also includes a refreshed On The Red Carpet presented by Delta exhibit, including GRAMMY Awards looks from BTS, Rihanna, Nipsey Hussle, Alicia Keys, Miranda Lambert, Lang Lang, Maren Morris, Michelle Obama, Rita Ora, Carlos Santana, Kanye West, and Amy Winehouse. The Mono To Surround interactive will be upgraded to a Mono To Immersive presented by Harman experience and the interactive GRAMMY and Latin GRAMMY timeline will now have user-controlled capabilities.

“Our expanded partnership with The Latin Recording Academy will significantly increase the GRAMMY Museum’s impact by creating a consistent presence dedicated to celebrating the many genres of Latin music,” said Sticka. “Latin GRAMMY, 20 Years Of Excellence and our newly renovated third floor will greatly amplify the Museum’s mission to educate, inspire, and share the significance of all forms of music.“

“Latin music is a worldwide influence and we are honored to partner with the GRAMMY Museum to showcase the talented musicians, monumental Latin music moments, and significant milestones that have contributed to its popularity,” said Abaroa. “With the exhibit opening the week after this year’s Latin GRAMMY Awards, we can’t think of a better way to highlight the importance of our 20th anniversary celebration and look to the future to showcase our beautiful art form.”

Exhibit highlights include:

• Instruments played by Latin GRAMMY and GRAMMY winners, including Lila Downs, Banda El Recodo, Los Tucanes De Tijuana, Alejandro Sanz, and Julieta Venegas
• Juan Gabriel‘s tuxedo from his memorable 40-minute performance at the 10th Annual Latin GRAMMY Awards
• Luis Fonsi‘s outfit from his performance of “Despacito” at the 18th Annual Latin GRAMMY Awards
• Ricky Martin‘s paint-stained tuxedo shirt from his performance with the Blue Man Group at the 8th Annual Latin GRAMMY Awards

Latin artists who will be featured in the exhibit include:

• Marc Anthony
• Miguel Bosé
• Roberto Carlos
• Plácido Domingo
• Emilio Estefan
• Vicente Fernández
• Juan Gabriel
• Gilberto Gil
• Juan Luis Guerra
• Julio Iglesias
• José José
• Juanes
• Maná
• Ricky Martin
• Luz Rios
• Carlos Santana
• Alejandro Sanz
• Shakira
• Joan Manuel Serrat
• Caetano Veloso

Nov. 18 Schedule:

• 11 a.m.–Noon: Education Program for Students
• 4–6 p.m.: Official Ribbon-Cutting Ceremony
• 6–7 p.m.: Performances
• 7–10 p.m.: Free Public Museum Entry (first come, first served)

The Latin Recording Academy is an international, membership-based organization comprised of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking recording artists, musicians, songwriters, producers, and other creative and technical recording professionals. The organization is dedicated to improving the quality of life and cultural condition for Latin music and its makers. In addition to producing the Latin GRAMMY Awards to honor excellence in the recorded arts and sciences, The Latin Recording Academy provides educational and outreach programs for the Latin music community either directly or through its Latin GRAMMY Cultural Foundation®. For more information, please visit LatinGRAMMY.com.

The Museum of Modern Art announced Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented, a major exhibition that will present the political engagement, fearless and groundbreaking visual experimentation, and utopian aspirations of artists in the early 20th century. On view in The Robert B. Menschel Galleries from May 10 through September 12, 2020, Engineer, Agitator, Constructor will showcase the activities of historical avant-gardes, including galvanizing works of Dada, Bauhaus, De Stijl, Futurism, and Russian Constructivism, and highlights such figures as Aleksandr Rodchenko, Lyubov Popova, John Heartfield, and Hannah Höch.

Drawn from the Museum’s outstanding holdings from this period, the exhibition will mark a recent acquisition of more than 300 works from the Merrill C. Berman Collection, one of the most significant collections of early 20th-century works on paper in private hands. Engineer, Agitator, Constructor: The Artist Reinvented is organized by Jodi Hauptman, Senior Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, MoMA, and Adrian Sudhalter, Consulting Curator, with Jane Cavalier, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Drawings and Prints, MoMA.

The historic acquisition in 2018 from the legendary Merrill C. Berman Collection transformed MoMA’s holdings of early 20th-century avant-garde art from Soviet Russia; Weimar Germany; the newly constituted Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia; the Netherlands; and Italy, securing the Museum’s position as the unmatched repository of art of this period. Containing both individual masterworks and rare contextual material, the Berman Collection at MoMA offers standout strength and unparalleled depth in its area. With its capacity to fill gaps and diversify modernism’s narratives, this acquisition is particularly urgent at this moment of the Museum’s expansion, offering exciting opportunities to share new and compelling stories, including those that are explicitly political, of the early 20th century.

Engineer, Agitator, Constructor will examine the far-reaching and profound impact of the era’s momentous events—World War I, the Russian Revolution, and the collapse of the AustroHungarian Empire, to name a few—and wholesale shifts in industry, technology, and labor. The exhibition will demonstrate that in this age of upheaval, artists reimagined themselves as “engineers,” “agitators,” “constructors,” “photomonteurs,” and “workers.” They turned away from painting and sculpture, inventing new, dynamic visual languages while working as propagandists, advertisers, publishers, editors, theater designers, curators, and more—all as they robustly engaged in novel ways with expanded audiences and established new infrastructures for the presentation and distribution of their work. Engineer, Agitator, Constructor will show how these artists actively addressed and sought to shape a mass audience; invented new strategies that persuasively reflected the modern moment with its shocks and ruptures; and wrestled with their own positions as protestors, mouthpieces of new regimes, or workers. The result of such redefinitions of artistic practice, the exhibition argues, was a reorientation of the work of art itself from painting to production—as one contemporary critic put it, a move “from easel to machine.”

The exhibition will also foreground the importance of collaboration and collectives and the strong continuities between the realms of fine art and graphic design in an age profoundly impacted by advances in photomechanical reproduction. Importantly, the exhibition will illuminate the essential roles of women artists in avant-garde activities, while mapping vital networks of image makers, curators, publishers, and designers across Europe, connecting key city centers: Berlin to Warsaw, Paris to Budapest. Objects shown will include propaganda, advertising, exhibition display, typography, books, journals, films, photography, and theater design, along with painting, drawing, sculpture, and printmaking.

Engineer, Agitator, Constructor will trace the decisive role of photomontage, a crucial new language of the early 20th century. Artists took advantage of the explosion of what was then new media, cutting up and pasting together bits of printed photographic and widely circulated images. The resulting works were directly connected to their current moment: in their bold collisions and juxtapositions, in their deployment of photographs of crowds and striding leaders, and in their presentation of laborers, cities, and factories, these artists captured the spirit of a new age.

“The exhibition will ask: during and in the wake of war and revolution, does the artist have a right to exist? If so, on what basis? And in what form? These questions—central to the theoretical debates of the era—will serve as the exhibition’s focus,” says Hauptman. “Just as gripping is the possibility of linking the radical experimentation of the early 20th century with contemporary art. The strategies, practices, and languages of artists involved in Constructivism, Dada, and Futurism, for example, are still reverberating today, and the exhibition will provoke vigorous and challenging conversations across time.”

Engineer, Agitator, Constructor will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication commemorating the Merrill C. Berman acquisition, edited by Jodi Hauptman and Adrian Sudhalter with an essay by Juliet Kinchin, curator in MoMA’s Department of Architecture and Design, along with in-depth explorations of some 30 key objects by experts in the field.

Generous funding for the exhibition is provided by The Dian Woodner Exhibition Endowment Fund. Additional support is provided by the Annual Exhibition Fund.

Home movies are a form of personal filmmaking made to entertain intimate audiences of family and friends at private screenings. Since the introduction of small-gauge, portable cameras in 1922 heralded the unofficial birth of amateur moviemaking, the many thousands of reels of non-theatrical film shot by individuals around the world amounts to perhaps the largest body of work on film produced in the twentieth century. Commonly orphaned by those who made them, sold for stock footage and used as documentation, less attention has been given to what home movies represent as an alternative to theatrical film and what they share with the work of avant-garde filmmakers.

The Yoshiko and Akio Morita Galleries host Private Lives Public Spaces (October 21, 2019 – July 01, 2020), the Museum’s first large-scale exhibition of home movies and amateur films drawn exclusively from its collection. This gallery presentation of largely unseen, privately produced works will explore the connection between artist’s cinema, amateur movies, and family filmmaking since the 1923 introduction of small-gauge film stock heralded the unofficial birth of affordable home moviemaking. The Museum’s archival holdings of the genre represent a remarkable range of creativity by artists, celebrities, world travelers, and the public at large. This presentation of moving image work offers a renewed perspective on the creative strategies that amateur filmmaking shares with experimental and avant-garde cinema of the 20th century. In conjunction with the gallery installation, MoMA’s Department of Education will stage a Home Movie Day comprising three Library of Congress National Film Registry programs.

Organized by Ron Magliozzi, Curator, Brittany Shaw, Curatorial Assistant, Katie Trainor, Collections Manager, Peter Williamson, Preservation Officer, and Ashley Swinnerton, Collection Specialist, Department of Film

Featuring works dating from 1907 to 1996, Private Lives Public Spaces is the Museum’s first major exhibition of home movies and amateur films drawn exclusively from its collection. Democratic, personal, and unregulated, this “people’s cinema” is viewed as a precursor to social media, and MoMA’s installation is predicated on the expanded opportunities for display provided by digital media and the fresh appreciation that viewers bring to self-expression in present-day moving image culture.

Inspired by photographer Edward Steichen’s influential exhibition The Family of Man mounted at the Museum in 1955, over six-hundred reels of 16mm, 8mm and Super 8mm film were reviewed over the past two years from which 200 reels were chosen for non-theatrical installation on 102 screens. Following Steichen’s lead, the selection embraces a multitude and diversity of content, and an immersive display style, reflecting the overload of social media. With notable exceptions, these newly preserved films are silent, unedited, and exhibited as individual works. Different screen sizes and configurations loosely distinguish between interwoven groupings of ethnographic and social interest, family life, artist and celebrity subjects, and the Museum’s institutional history. Acknowledging the truism that “all home movies are amateur films, not all amateur films are home movies,” Private Lives Public Spaces mixes varying degrees of amateurism in the selection and display of work. In an intimate gallery setting, it’s hoped that blurring the lines between the hardcore amateurism of family home movies, films by artful amateurs, and the work of artists who honor the amateur aesthetic will have an instructional effect.

Consisting largely of family histories and travel diaries cinema, the home movies on display demonstrate signature aspects of the form: its wayward connections to narrative; quick takes and camera movement; technical mistakes, and the chemical scars of neglect that often predate their acquisition. In preparing the films for exhibition; the Museum has preserved these characteristics as unique aesthetic markers. Individually, the home movies in Private Lives Public Spaces are fragile “souvenirs” of lives-lived; collectively, this installation proposes, they take on meaning akin to the poetry of movement and generations passing.

i Maxim, Hiram Percy. “Editorial” Journal of the Amateur Cinema League, December 1926. Quoted in Alan D. Kattelle’s Home Movies: A History of the American Industry, 1897-1979. Nashua, NH: Transition Publishing, 2000, p 296.

ii Mekas, Jonas. “8mm as Folk Art” Village Voice 18 April 1963, Movie Journal New York: Macmillan, 1972, p 83.

iii Deren, Maya. “Amateur Versus Professional” Film Culture 39, 1965, p 45-46.

Celebrating the remarkable collection of drawings recently donated to the Walker Arts Center by longtime patrons Miriam and Erwin Kelen, The Expressionist Figure: The Miriam And Erwin Kelen Collection Of Drawings, explores the expressive potential of the human body. Richly varied in theme and style, the works on paper span more than a century of artistic experimentation. Featuring portraiture, social satire, erotica, and fantasy in mediums ranging from crayon, ink, and graphite to watercolor, pastel, and collage, the Kelens’ works are joined by a select group of related drawings and sculpture from the Walker’s current holdings. As a whole, The Expressionist Figure: The Miriam And Erwin Kelen Collection Of Drawings is not only a display of virtuoso artworks but also a testament to the pleasure of building a collection and the rewards of sharing it.

Among the artists in the exhibition are Max Beckmann, Louise Bourgeois, Chuck Close, Willem de Kooning, Edgar Degas, Jim Denomie, Otto Dix, Marlene Dumas, Arshile Gorky, George Grosz, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, William Kentridge, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Gustav Klimt, René Magritte, Henri Matisse, Kerry James Marshall, Joan Miró, Claes Oldenburg, Pablo Picasso, Rowan Pope, Egon Schiele, Kara Walker and Andy Warhol.

The Expressionist Figure: The Miriam and Erwin Kelen Collection of Drawings, Curated by Joan Rothfuss, guest curator, Visual Arts, is on view November 17, 2019 through April 19, 2020.

One of the most internationally celebrated art museums, the multidisciplinary Walker Art Center in Minneapolis is known for presenting today’s most compelling artists from the United States and around the world. In addition to presentations of works from its world-renowned collection, the Walker organizes and hosts exhibitions that travel worldwide and annually presents a broad array of contemporary performance, music, dance, theater, design, moving image, and education programs. The adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, one of the country’s first urban sculpture parks, features at its center a beloved Twin Cities landmark—Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen—as well as some 40 sculptures by multigenerational artists from Minnesota and around the globe on the 19-acre Walker campus.

The Walker Art Center is a catalyst for the creative expression of artists and the active engagement of audiences. Focusing on the visual, performing, and media arts of our time, the Walker takes a global, multidisciplinary, and diverse approach to the creation, presentation, interpretation, collection, and preservation of art. Walker programs examine the questions that shape and inspire us as individuals, cultures, and communities. Visit walkerart.org for more information on the Walker’s upcoming events and programs.

$15 adults; $13 seniors (62+); $10 students (with ID) Free to Walker members and ages 18 and under. Free with a paid event ticket within six months of performance or screening. Free to all every Thursday evening (5–9 pm) and on the first Saturday of each month (10 am–6 pm).

Enjoy free gallery admission on Thursday nights from 5 to 9 pm.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Sunday 11 am–5 pm Thursday, 11 am–9 pm Friday–Saturday 11 am–6 pm Closed Mondays

Box Office: 612.375.7600 Walker Art Center 725 Vineland Place Minneapolis, MN 55403

MoMA PS1 will present the first New York museum exhibition of the work of visionary feminist and activist artist Niki de Saint Phalle (American and French, 1930‒2002). On view from April 5 to September 7, 2020, the exhibition will feature over 100 works created from the 1970s until the artist’s death, including sculptures, prints, drawings, jewelry, and archival material. Highlighting Saint Phalle’s interdisciplinary approach and engagement with key social and political issues, the exhibition will focus on works that she created to transform environments, individuals, and society.

Niki de Saint Phalle was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France and raised in New York City. In 1948, at age 18, she married the writer Harry Matthews. They moved to Paris in 1952, and shortly thereafter Saint Phalle was hospitalized for a nervous breakdown and began painting as a therapeutic activity. In the late 1950s, Saint Phalle met artist Jean Tinguely, an important collaborator whom she married in 1971. She was the only female member of the Nouveau Réalisme group with Tinguely, Arman, Christo, and Yves Klein, among others. In 1961, the first solo exhibition of Saint Phalle’s work was held at Galerie J, Paris. That same year, her work was included in the exhibition The Art of Assemblage at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Saint Phalle was the subject of a retrospective at the Ulm Museum, Germany, and Centre Pompidou, Paris in 1980, and at the Kunsthalle Bonn in 1992. In 1994, she moved to California, where she lived until her death in 2002.

Early in her career, Saint Phalle pushed against accepted artistic practices, creating work that used assemblage and performative modes of production. Collaboration was always central to her work, including several co-authored sculptures made with the artist Jean Tinguely. Beginning in the late 1960s, Saint Phalle starting making large-scale sculptures, which led to an expansion of her practice into architectural projects, sculpture gardens, books, prints, films, theater sets, clothing, jewelry, and, famously, her own perfume.

From this period forward, Saint Phalle also created a series of innovative works that reflect an ethos of collaboration and engagement with the politics of social space. Addressing subjects that ranged from women’s rights to climate change and HIV/AIDS awareness, Saint Phalle was often at the vanguard in addressing the social and political issues of her time. Her illustrated book, AIDS: You Can’t Catch It Holding Hands (1986), written in collaboration with Dr. Silvio Barandun, worked to destigmatize the disease and was translated into six languages.

Central to the exhibition is an examination of Saint Phalle’s large-scale outdoor sculptures and architectural projects, including three houses built for Rainer von Diez between 1969 and 1971; Queen Califia’s Magical Circle, a sculpture park in Escondido, CA; the monumental sculpture Le Cyclop in Milly-la-Forêt, France; Golem, a playground in Jerusalem; Noah’s Ark sculpture park in Jerusalem; and Le Dragon de Knokke, a children’s playhouse in Belgium.

Many of these ideas culminated in Saint Phalle’s central life project, Tarot Garden, a massive architectural park outside Rome, Italy, which she began constructing in the late 1970s and continued to develop alongside key collaborators until her death. Opened to the public in 1998, the garden and its structures, which are based on the Major Arcana of the tarot deck, allow for moments of interaction and reflection that underscore Saint Phalle’s use of art to alter perception. The exhibition will include photographs and drawings of Tarot Garden as well as models that Saint Phalle created for its various structures.

Posthumously, her work has been the subject of major exhibitions at Tate Liverpool (2008); Grand Palais, Paris (2014); and the Power Station of Art, Shanghai (2018). Saint Phalle is represented in public collections including The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and Tate Gallery, London.

The exhibition is organized by Ruba Katrib, Curator, MoMA PS1.

MoMA PS1 is devoted to today’s most experimental, thought-provoking contemporary art. Founded in 1976 as the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, it was the first nonprofit arts center in the United States devoted solely to contemporary art and is recognized as a defining force in the alternative space movement. In 2000 The Museum of Modern Art and P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center merged, creating the largest platform for contemporary art in the country and one of the largest in the world. Functioning as a living, active meeting place for the general public, MoMA PS1 is a catalyst for ideas, discourses, and new trends in contemporary art.

Hours: MoMA PS1 is open from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., Thursday through Monday. Closed on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Day.

Admission: $10 suggested donation; $5 for students and senior citizens; free for New York City residents, MoMA members, and MoMA admission ticket holders within 14 days of visit. Free admission as a Gift to New Yorkers made possible by the AnnaMaria and Stephen Kellen Foundation.

Directions: MoMA PS1 is located at 22-25 Jackson Avenue at 46th Ave in Long Island City, Queens, across the Queensboro Bridge from midtown Manhattan. Traveling by subway, take the E, M, or 7 to Court Sq; or the G to Court Sq or 21 StVan Alst. By bus, take the Q67 to Jackson and 46th Ave or the B62 to 46th Ave.

Information: For general inquiries, call (718) 784-2084 or visit www.momaps1.org.

This long-awaited book captures the spirit of a legendary institution through the words of those who made it New York’s most vital venue for contemporary art.

This fall, The Museum of Modern Art will release the first publication on the history of MoMA PS1, which traces the institution’s evolution from the 1970s to today through interviews, ephemera, never-before-seen images, and an extensive exhibition history. Since 1976, MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens, has been a crucible for radical experimentation, engaging artists from a range of disciplines. Structured around interviews with Alanna Heiss, PS1’s founder and director of more than three decades, MoMA PS1: A History (published October 22, 2019) offers a vivid chronicle of the extraordinary history of New York’s premier venue for contemporary art. The publication also features contributions by artists and curators who have been closely associated with PS1—including James Turrell, R. H. Quaytman, Kevin Beasley, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, and Martha Wilson—supplemented by excerpts from previously unpublished interviews from the 1970s and statements from numerous figures who helped shape the institution.

This publication was edited by Klaus Biesenbach, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and former director of MoMA PS1 and Chief Curator at Large, The Museum of Modern Art, New York; and Bettina Funke, art historian, editor, former head of publications for Documenta 13, and co-founder of The Leopard Press.

Contributors include Philip Aarons, Marina Abramović, Carl Andre, Sarah Arison, Kevin Beasley, Lynda Benglis, Huma Bhabha, Linda Blumberg, Rudy Burckhardt, Cao Fei, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, Janet Cardiff, John Comfort, Chris Dercon, Peter Eleey, Tom Finkelpearl, Frederick Fisher, Simone Forti, Tina Girouard, Philip Glass, Antoine (Tony) Guerrero, Agnes Gund, Marcia Hafif, Larissa Harris, Alanna Heiss, Jene Highstein, Nancy Holt, Patrick Ireland, Barbara Kruger, Les Levine, Sol LeWitt, Jonathan Lill, Glenn D. Lowry, Warren Niesłuchowski, Richard Nonas, Charlemagne Palestine, Carol Parker, Lucio Pozzi, Carolee Schneemann, Oliver Shultz, R. H. Quaytman, James Turrell, Lawrence Weiner, Jeff Weinstein, Hannah Wilke, Martha Wilson, and Andrea Zittel.

MoMA PS1: A History is published by The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and is available now at MoMA stores, on amazon and online at store.moma.org. Hardcover, $65/£52. 304 pages, 350 illustrations. ISBN: 978-1-63345-069-1. It is distributed to the trade through ARTBOOK|D.A.P. in the United States and Canada and through Thames & Hudson outside the United States and Canada.

Major support for the publication is provided by Agnes Gund, Kathy and Richard S. Fuld, Jr., and Jack Shear, in memory of Hans Bodenmann, through the Jo Carole Lauder Publications Fund of The International Council of The Museum of Modern Art. Additional funding is provided by Jane and John Comfort, and Suydam R. Lansing.

MoMA is grateful for the support provided by the Leon Levy Foundation toward the establishment of the MoMA PS1 Archives.

Event To Feature Interviews With Northeast Ohio Musicians And Photographer

The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Library & Archives celebrates its current project to process over 500 previously unavailable archival collections and make them available to the public with a special event on November 7^that 7 p.m. EST. The event includes a panel discussion with NEO Sound donors and new archival display. The event is free with RSVP and takes place in the Fran and Jules Belkin Theatre in the Gill and Tommy LiPuma Center for Creative Arts on the Cuyahoga Community College Metro campus (2809 Woodland Avenue).

The National Archives grants program, carried out through the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), awarded a two-year grant to the Rock Hall to fund the accessibility of these historically important music resources. Included in the grant project are a number of collections related to NEO Sound, the Rock Hall’s local music preservation initiative.

Panelists include longtime musicians and Rock Hall donors Chris Butler (Waitresses, Tin Huey, 15 60 75) and Marky Ray (terrible parade, Death on a Stick, Death of Samantha, Jim Rose Circus, New Salem Witch Hunters), and photographer Dave Treat, who took some of the earliest images of the legendary Cleveland band the Dead Boys.

The evening will conclude with a reception in the Library & Archives reading room, where attendees can view a new archival display entitled “Local Music U Want: Northeast Ohio Punk and New Wave,” showcasing materials donated by the panelists and made available through the NHPRC grant. “Local Music U Want” focuses on the unique Northeast Ohio punk and new wave scenes of the 1970s and ‘80s, fueled by the changing post-industrial landscape of the “Rust Belt.” Unlike other music scenes in the U.S., Northeast Ohio punk and new wave primarily flew under the radar, allowing the music to evolve into something more avant-garde and exploratory. Featured in the exhibit are photos, stickers, flyers, cassette zines and other promotional materials from the Rock Hall’s NEO Sound collections on local bands the Dead Boys, Devo, New Salem Witch Hunters, Death of Samantha, the Waitresses, Pere Ubu, the Styrenes, Pagans, Tin Huey, and 15 60 75 (The Numbers Band).

The Library & Archives is the most comprehensive repository of materials relating to the history of rock & roll. Its mission is to collect, preserve, and provide access to these resources for scholars, educators, students, journalists, and the general public in order to broaden awareness and understanding of rock & roll, its roots, and its impact on our society. Located in Cleveland, the Library & Archives is free and available for visits by fans, students, outside researchers and the general public. Scheduled appointments are necessary prior to visiting the L&A and can be made by calling 216-515-1956 or emailing library@rockhall.org.

Programming Launches With Talk on Museum’s Latest Book, “We Return Fighting: World War I and the Shaping of Modern Black Identity”

Programming Lineup Features Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III, Susan Rice, Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Treva Lindsay

To commemorate the upcoming Veterans Day and the centennial of World War I, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture has announced a public program on the museum’s latest book, We Return Fighting: World War I and the Shaping of Modern Black Identity, Thursday, Nov. 7. Guest curator Krewasky Salter will join Howard University Professor Greg Carr for a one-on-one discussion on the WWI experience told through the lens of African American soldiers, military families, women, anti-war advocates and public intellectuals who played a vital role in WWI and how they hoped to live out post-Civil War expectations of full citizenship upon returning home. The discussion is free and open to the public. More information about the book and the upcoming WWI exhibition is available on the museum’s website.

The book event is the highlight of an lively November programming schedule that also features a program on African American feminism with Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Treva Lindsay, an intimate conversation with former National Security Adviser to President Obama and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice and an interactive program on how economic and social inequities negatively affect the health of communities of color in the latest installment of the program series, A Seat at the Table.

All programs held in the museum’s Oprah Winfrey Theater will stream live on the museum’s Ustream channel at ustream.tv.

November Programming

Lectures & Discussion: Is Womanist To Feminist As Purple Is To Lavender?: African American Women Writers and Scholars Discuss Feminism

Saturday, Nov. 2; 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Oprah Winfrey Theater)

Inspired by Alice Walker’s expression on feminism, Is Womanist To Feminist As Purple Is To Lavender? African American Women Writers and Scholars Discuss Feminism refers to a quotation taken from her seminal anthology of essays, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose. In the piece, Walker gave name to the idea of the importance of theorizing feminism from an African American perspective. Through performance and discussion, the program will explore feminism and womanism in contemporary African American women’s intellectual and literary thought featuring Beverly Guy-Sheftall, a pioneering veteran of the field of African American feminism, and Treva Lindsey, a leading representative of the contemporary generation of feminist scholars. Before and after the discussion, two dynamic poetry performers, Holly Bass and Venus Thrash, will explore feminism creatively. The program will end with an audience Q&A and book signing. Admission is free; however, registration is required at https://nmaahc.si.edu/event/upcoming.

A Seat at the Table: Racial Disparities and Health

Sunday, Nov. 3; 6:45 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. (Heritage Hall)

The museum will host a thought-provoking conversation on racial disparities in health outcomes in this latest installment of the A Seat at the Table program series. Cindy George of Texas Medical Center’s TMC Pulse magazine will moderate a discussion between National Medical Association Director Martin Hamlette and University of Maryland Professor Craig Fryer about how economic and social inequities negatively impact the health outcomes of communities of color. After the presentation, audience participants will have the opportunity to share their stories and ideas on ways of improving their health and the health of their communities. A Seat at the Table is an interactive program for participants to consider challenging questions about race, identity and economic justice over a family-style meal. To purchase tickets and to learn about the latest installment of A Seat at the Table, visit https://nmaahc.si.edu/event/upcoming.

Lectures & Discussion: We Return Fighting: World War I and the Shaping of Modern Black Identity

Thursday, Nov. 7; 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Oprah Winfrey Theater)

Ahead of Veterans Day, the museum will host a public program on the its latest book: We Return Fighting: World War I and the Shaping of Modern Black Identity. Through essays and photos, the book tells the stories of how black soldiers fought a war abroad and came home to combat racial injustices in the United States. Copies of the book will be available in Heritage Hall. For ticket information and more details on the book event, visit https://nmaahc.si.edu/event/upcoming.

Cinema at NMAAHC: WAVES

Sunday, Nov. 10; 2 p.m. (Oprah Winfrey Theater)

The museum will host a special screening of the movie Waves. The film, starring Sterling K. Brown and Lucas Hedge, is set against the vibrant landscape of South Florida. Waves traces the epic emotional journey of a suburban African American family—led by a well-intentioned but domineering father—as they navigate love, forgiveness and coming together in the aftermath of a loss. For ticket information and more details on the book event, visit https://nmaahc.si.edu/event/upcoming.

Cultural Expressions: Mindful Eating for the Holiday

Wednesday, Nov. 13; 7 p.m. (Oprah Winfrey Theater)

To kick-off the holiday season, the museum will host a panel discussion on how we all can eat healthier during the holidays. With Thanksgiving around the corner, many Americans gather with friends and family to feast on good food. Foods enjoyed by African Americans traditionally represent an important cultural touchstone during the holidays. However, many dishes, while delicious, are not always the healthiest choices. In this program, nutritionists and food historians will discuss the history behind favorite holiday foods and how to adapt recipes using more healthful ingredients. For ticket information and more details on the book event, visit https://nmaahc.si.edu/event/upcoming.

Birthright Citizens: A History of Race & Rights in Antebellum America

Saturday, Nov. 16; noon (Robert F. Smith Family History Center, Level 2)

Special guest Martha S. Jones will discuss how African Americans fought for their legal rights through the courts, conventions and the legislative process from her award-winning book Birthright Citizens: A History of Race & Rights in Antebellum America. With a focus on 19th-century Baltimore, Birthright Citizens uses archival records and new scholarly research to uncover how free blacks influenced the terms of citizenship for all Americans. Jones is the Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. To register for the event, email familyhistorycenter@si.edu.

December Programming

Tough Love: Conversation Between Susan Rice and Lonnie G. Bunch III

Tuesday, Dec. 3; 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. (Oprah Winfrey Theater)

Susan Rice, former national security adviser and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, will discuss her recently published memoir, Tough Love. Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III will be in conversation with Rice for an hour, focusing on the challenges that Rice faced while leading the National Security Agency during the Obama administration, along with pivotal moments in her storied career. Books will be available for sale and signing courtesy of Smithsonian Enterprises. For ticket information and more details on the book event, visit https://nmaahc.si.edu/event/upcoming.

Historically Speaking: Pete Souza: Obama—An Intimate Portrait new edition

Wednesday, Dec. 4; 7 p.m. (Oprah Winfrey Theater)

Famed White House Photographer Pete Souza will return to the museum to discuss an updated edition of his renowned collection of images of 44th President Barack Obama and his family. The book, An Intimate Portrait, will be available for sale and signing courtesy of Smithsonian Enterprises. For ticket information and more details on the book event, https://nmaahc.si.edu/event/upcoming.

Robert F. Smith Family History Center: The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African American Culinary History with Michael Twitty

Saturday, Dec. 14; noon (Oprah Winfrey Theater)

In this program, renowned culinary historian Michael Twitty will discuss his memoir on Southern cuisine in The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African American Culinary History in the Old South. In his book, Twitty unlocks a treasure chest of traditions, culture and memory of 300 years of southern food history through the African American experience. Along the way Twitty weaves the story of his own diverse family while exploring how to navigate a history of the Old South marked by discomfort and injustice, as well as triumph and legacy. The Cooking Gene is a winner of the 2018 James Beard Foundation Award for writing and book of the year. Books will be available for sale and signing courtesy of Smithsonian Enterprises. To register for the event, email familyhistorycenter@si.edu.

Since opening Sept. 24, 2016, the National Museum of African American History and Culture has welcomed more than 6 million visitors. Occupying a prominent location next to the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., the nearly 400,000-square-foot museum is the nation’s largest and most comprehensive cultural destination devoted exclusively to exploring, documenting and showcasing the African American story and its impact on American and world history. For more information about the museum, visit www.nmaahc.si.edu, or call Smithsonian information at (202) 633-1000.

The Sound Unseen Film + Music Festival (November 12-17) announced the film lineup for this year’s 20th Anniversary edition of the film festival.

Highlights include a special appearance of John Doe with the screening of W.T. Morgan’s documentary X: THE UNHEARD MUSIC, award-winning filmmaker Ondi Timoner coming to Sound Unseen with a 15th Anniversary screening of her film, DIG!, as well as a special presentation of the MAPPLETHORPE Director’s Cut. Sound Unseen also announced that Scott Crawford’s BOY HOWDY: THE STORY OF CREEM MAGAZINE, would be the Closing Night selection.

In the fall of 1999, Sound Unseen introduced itself as a unique, cutting edge “films-on-music” festival in Minneapolis. Formulated as a cultural organization dedicated to the role of film and music as a conduit of powerful ideas and diverse viewpoints. Its mission is to foster a greater appreciation of cinema, to bridge cultures, create and expand community, provide cultural exchange, networking opportunities and educational outreach through regular interaction with great films, filmmakers, musicians and artists.

Since its inception, It has established itself as one of the premiere niche festivals in the country, but more importantly as a vital part of the regional cultural scene. Now in its 19th year, the festival has expanded to include year-round programming, unique pop-up events, and special screenings including world and regional premieres.

Named “One of the 25 Coolest Film Festivals In The World” by Moviemaker Magazine in 2016, the “Best Winter Film Festival” by the Star Tribune 2012, and the “Best of the Fests 2010” from Mpls/St Paul Magazine, Sound Unseen continues its tenure as the region’s premiere films-on-music festival. While bringing the best in documentaries, short films, and music videos it also showcases rare concert footage, interactive panels, and live music events. As part of its year-round presence, Sound Unseen offers a successful monthly screening series and special events throughout the Twin Cities. This diversity in content is one of the things that separates Sound Unseen from the typical outdoor mega concerts and film festivals.

Sound Unseen Festival Director Jim Brunzell and Producer/Co-Programmer Rich Gill, said, “Our lineup this year is a wonderful mix of films hot on the film festival circuit, classics, and screenings that include appearances by wonderful filmmakers and musicians. We are really excited about this group of films and events built around them that should make our 20th Anniversary edition truly memorable.”

Scott Crawford’s BOY HOWDY: THE STORY OF CREEM MAGAZINE joins the previously announced Seamus Murphy’s A DOG CALLED MONEY (Opening Night), and Brandon Vedder’s STRANGE NEGOTIATIONS (Centerpiece) to complete an impressive trio of Gala screenings. BOY HOWDY: THE STORY OF CREEM MAGAZINE looks at the seminal Creem Magazine‘s humble beginnings to becoming one of the publications of record for rock n’ roll. Fifty years after publishing its first issue, “America’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll Magazine” remains a seditious spirit in music and culture. The film features interviews with Cameron Crowe, Alice Cooper, Kirk Hammett, Joan Jett, Michael Stipe, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Chad Smith, Peter Wolf and Wayne Kramer.

The one and only John Doe of X will come to Sound Unseen as part of a presentation of W.T. Morgan’s X: THE UNHEARD MUSIC. Screened on 35mm, the film is one of the best music films of the punk era. Shot over the course of five years, this documentary presents spectacular live performances interspersed with interviews with the band members and associates.

The only filmmaker to be a two-time Sundance Film Festival Grand Prize Jury Winner, Ondi Timoner comes to Minnesota with two of her films. The first is the 15th Anniversary screening of DIG!. The 2004 documentary looked at the collision of art and commerce through the eyes of The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre. The film was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art for their permanent collection. Timoner will also be on hand for her Director’s Cut of MAPPLETHORPE. Led by a devastating performance by Matt Smith in the title role, the stylish and well-crafted biopic covers the full life of its subject, world renowned and controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, most frequently providing an alluring view of New York in its grittiest era.

Other highlights include; ALL I CAN SAY, a film created from hours of home video footage shot by tragic Blind Melon front man Shannon Hoon; Martha Kehoe and Joan Tosoni‘s GORDON LIGHTFOOT: IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND, a portrait of Canada’s most famous singer-songwriter; Tyler Measom’s I WANT MY MTV, which traces the beginnings and exploding influence of the music video channel; Steven Gaddis’ LIVE FROM THE ASTROTURF: ALICE COOPER, about a super-secret concert event at a record store in Dallas, featuring the legendary shock rocker; the North American premiere of Simon David’s TIME AND PLACE, about cult favorite Atlanta R&B artist Lee Moses; and Brent Hodges’ WHO LET THE DOGS OUT, which explores the history, influence, and story behind the famous (or infamous) song.

For more information about Sound Unseen, as well as how to purchase tickets, go to: http://www.soundunseen.com.

The 2019 Sound Unseen Film Festival official selections:

Opening Night Selection

A DOG CALLED MONEY MIDWEST PREMIERE

Director: Seamus Murphy

Countries: Ireland/UK, Running Time: 90 min

Alternative-music icon PJ Harvey’s ninth studio album, 2016’s “The Hope Six Demolition Project,” was created through a unique process that blended travelogue, photography, performance art, and now a documentary feature. It began when Harvey, looking to develop a new set of politically tinged songs that would also evoke a tangible sense of place, decided to accompany award-winning photojournalist and filmmaker Seamus Murphy as he travelled on assignments to war-torn regions in Afghanistan and Kosovo, as well as to the poor, mostly black neighborhoods of Washington, D.C.

CENTERPIECE SELECTION

STRANGE NEGOTIATIONS MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Brandon Vedder

Countries: USA, Running Time: 91 min

After renouncing his long-held Christian beliefs and walking away from his critically-acclaimed band, Pedro the Lion, musician David Bazan retreated into a solitary life of touring solo, struggling to rebuild his worldview and career from the ground-up, and to support his family of four. STRANGE NEGOTIATIONS finds David a decade into his journey, during which he has become a sort of reluctant prophet to Americans reeling from their country’s own crisis of faith highlighted during the 2016 presidential election.

CLOSING NIGHT SELECTION

BOY HOWDY: THE STORY OF CREEM MAGAZINE MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Scott Crawford

Country: USA, Running Time: 75 min

Capturing the messy upheaval of the ’70s just as rock was re-inventing itself, the film explores Creem Magazine’s humble beginnings in post-riot Detroit, follows its upward trajectory from underground paper to national powerhouse, then bears witness to its imminent demise following the tragic and untimely deaths of its visionary publisher, Barry Kramer, and its most famous alum and genius clown prince, Lester Bangs, a year later.

Additional Feature Films

ALL I CAN SAY MIDWEST PREMIERE

Directors: Danny Clinch, Taryn Gould

Coleen Hennessy, Shannon Hoon

Country: USA, Running Time: 102 min

Shannon Hoon, lead singer of the rock band Blind Melon, filmed himself from 1990-95 with a Hi8 video camera, recording up until a few hours before his sudden death at the age of 28. His camera was a diary and his closest confidant. In the hundreds of hours of footage, Hoon meticulously documented his life – his family, his creative process, his television, his band’s rise to fame and his struggle with addiction.

ALL THAT JAZZ (1979) SPECIAL 40TH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING

Director: Bob Fosse

Country: USA, Running Time: 123 min

Winner of four Academy Awards and the Cannes Film Festival Palme d’or. When he is not planning for his upcoming stage musical or working on his Hollywood film, choreographer/director Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) is popping pills and sleeping with a seemingly endless line of women. The physical and mental stress begins to take a toll on the ragged perfectionist. Soon, he must decide whether or not his non-stop work schedule and hedonistic lifestyle are worth risking his life. The film is a semi-autobiographical tale written and directed by the legendary Bob Fosse.

BEATS MIDWEST PREMIERE

Director: Brian Welsh

Country: UK, Running Time: 101 min

In the mid-1990s, the United Kingdom was overrun by raves: illegal parties with heavy beats and an endless supply of drugs. The Criminal Justice Bill introduced by the government in 1994 criminalized ‘gathering around repetitive beats’. This led to massive protests and even more raves. Against that background, BEATS showcases the unlikely friendship; between teens Spanner and Johnno in a Scottish town. The first is living with his criminal brother, the other is facing a move to a new town with his family and his potential new stepfather, who happens to be a cop. On their last night out, the two friends steal cash from Spanner’s brother and journey into an underworld of anarchy, freedom and collision with the forces of law and order.

BRAINIAC: TRANSMISSIONS AFTER ZERO MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Eric Mahoney

Country: USA, Running Time: 108 min

In the mid 90’s, the Dayton, Ohio music scene became a hot spot generating world wide buzz from the influential indie rock being produced there (The Breeders, Guided by Voices). Arguably the most innovative of them all was the band Brainiac, led by musical genius and insanely charismatic front man Tim Taylor. The band was opening for Beck and being courted by major labels when Tim was tragically killed in a bizarre auto accident leaving his family and bandmates to pick up the pieces.

DAVE GRUSIN: NOT ENOUGH TIME MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Barbara Bentree

Country: USA, Running Time: 88 min

DAVE GRUSIN: NOT ENOUGH TIME is an award-winning, “elegant and uplifting” feature-length documentary about one of the 20th Century’s most important music composers. His music is known and loved all over the world but even his most ardent fans don’t completely realize what a phenomenal career he has had. Composer, Pianist, Arranger, Performer and Record Company Executive. He led a completely bi-coastal life for decades flying weekly between LA and NY to work with an astounding list of music and film artists.

DESOLATION CENTER

Director: Stuart Swezey

Country: USA, Running Time: 91 min

Desolation Center is the previously untold story of a series of early 80s guerrilla music and art performance happenings in Southern California that are recognized to have inspired Burning Man, Lollapalooza and Coachella, collective experiences that have become key elements of popular culture in the 21st century. The feature documentary splices interviews and rare performance footage of Sonic Youth, Minutemen, Meat Puppets, Swans, Redd Kross, Einstürzende Neubauten, Survival Research Laboratories, Savage Republic and more, documenting a time when pushing the boundaries of music, art, and performance felt almost like an unspoken obligation.

DIG! (2004) SPECIAL 15TH ANNIVERSARY SCREENING

Director: Ondi Timoner

Country: USA, Running Time: 100 min

DIG! is a 2004 documentary film about the collision of art and commerce through the eyes of The Dandy Warhols and The Brian Jonestown Massacre, focusing on the developing careers and the love-hate relationship of the bands’ respective frontmen Courtney Taylor-Taylor and Anton Newcombe. It was shot over seven years and compiled from over 2500 hours of footage.

DIGGING FOR WELDON IRVINE MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Victorious De Costa

Country: USA, Running Time: 111 min

Langston Hughes’ cautionary prose has been the stimulus for some of the most important artistic offerings of the 20th century. Chiefly among them, the civil rights anthem “Young, Gifted and Black”, written by prolific musician-composer-playwright Weldon Irvine. In the wake of his untimely death, a focused, contemporary reflection upon his life reveals the astounding irony that Weldon Irvine would come to be one of [the music’s] most quintessential examples of Hughes’ examination.

DONS OF DISCO MIDWEST PREMIERE

Director: Jonathan Sutak

Country: USA, Running Time: 86 min

In the 1980s, Den Harrow dominated the European pop charts with hits like “Future Brain,” “Bad Boy,” and “Don’t Break My Heart.” Thirty years later, American photographer Thomas Barbey makes a startling revelation: he was “the secret voice” behind the project, and Italian Stefano Zandri has allegedly been lip-syncing for decades. In the laugh-out-loud Faustian drama, DONS OF DISCO, a 30-year-old secret, between two middle-aged men, will ignite the most conceptual music rivalry of all time. Who is the “true” artist behind Den Harrow: the face or the voice?

GORDON LIGHTFOOT: IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Directors: Martha Kehoe, Joan Tosoni

Country: Canada, Running Time: 91 min

Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind pays homage to Canada and the talents of their most celebrated son, Gordon Lightfoot, an extraordinary singer/songwriter. The film shows fascinating original footage of Lightfoot over the years, along with many artists who have covered his songs, such as Johnny Cash, Elvis, Neil Young, Judy Collins, and Bob Dylan.

I WANT MY MTV MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Tyler Measom

Country: USA, Running Time: 86 min

I Want My MTV takes its audience back to the channel’s beginnings, when the idea of a television channel devoted solely to screening newfangled videos from music’s hottest stars seemed destined for failure. From DEVO and Cyndi Lauper to David Bowie and Madonna, the film provides a peek into how the videos that defined a generation, as well as how the team of young executives—now some of the most prolific and powerful leaders in American media—tasked with growing this seed of an idea, would quickly flourish into a beloved but often controversial cultural juggernaut.

LAKE MICHIGAN MONSTER MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Ryland Tews

Country: USA, Running Time: 78 min

The eccentric Captain Seafield hires a crew of specialists to help him plot revenge against the creature that killed his father. After several failed attempts, Seafield is forced to take matters into his own drunken hands. What began as a simple case of man verses beast, soon turns into a rabbit hole of mysterious unknowns and Lovecraftian hijinks.

LIVE FROM THE ASTROTURF: ALICE COOPER MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Steven Gaddis

Country: USA, Running Time: 57 min

Alice Cooper reunites with the surviving members of the original lineup of the band to perform a blistering set on a small stage of pink astroturf at independent music store Good Records in Dallas, TX, 40 years after the band parted ways. Store owner Chris Penn pulls off the near insurmountable task of organizing the event and keeping Alice’s appearance a secret until the original shock-rocker hits the stage.

MAKING WAVES: THE ART OF CINEMATIC SOUND MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Midge Costin

Country: USA, Running Time: 94 min

MAKING WAVES: THE ART OF CINEMATIC SOUND reveals the hidden power of sound in cinema – and the unsung heroes whose creative breakthroughs have impacted the most beloved, classic films. Through film clips, interviews and archival footage, this documentary captures the history, impact and process of this overlooked art form.

MAPPLETHORPE: DIRECTOR’S CUT MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Ondi Timoner

Country: USA, Running Time: 111 min

This stylish and well-crafted biopic covers the full life of its subject, world renowned and controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, most frequently providing an alluring view of New York in its grittiest era.

MYSTIFY: MICHAEL HUTCHENCE MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Richard Lowenstein

Country: Australia, Running Time: 102 min

Mystify: Michael Hutchence is a powerfully intimate and insightful portrait of the internationally renowned INXS frontman, Michael Hutchence. Deftly woven from an extraordinary archive of rich imagery, Michael’s private home movies and those of his lovers, friends, and family, the film delves beneath the public persona of the charismatic ‘Rock God’ and transports us through the looking glass to reveal a multifaceted, intensely sensitive and complex man.

OTHER MUSIC MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Directors: Puloma Basu, Rob Hatch-Miller

Country: USA, Running Time: 84 min

Other Music was an influential and uncompromising New York City record store that was vital to the city’s early 2000s indie music scene. But when the store is forced to close its door due to rent increases, the homogenization of urban culture, and the shift from CDs to downloadable and streaming music, a cultural landmark is lost.

PICK IT UP! SKA IN THE 90S MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Taylor Morden

Country: USA, Running Time: 100 min

Documentary about the rise and fall of the third wave of Ska music. It tells the story of how an underground music scene somehow managed to survive being thrust into the mainstream spotlight for a brief moment in the ’90s. The movie features members of No Doubt, Reel Big Fish, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Sublime, Goldfinger, Less Than Jake.

PIPE DREAMS MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Stacey Tenenbaum

Country: Canada, Running Time: 78 min

Pipe Dreams follows 5 organists as they compete in Canada’s International Organ Competition. Held every 3 years in Montreal, this competition for organists under the age of 35, is one of the most exclusive competitions in the world. With over $100 000 worth of prize money on the line – tensions run high as our competitors vie for the top prize.

PUNK THE CAPITAL MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Directors: Paul Bishow, James Scheider

Country: USA, Running Time: 90 min

Film explores what happened when punk invaded our nation’s capital in the mid-late 1970’s. It was a culture clash – a collision between the music of anarchy and a city known for its conservatism. It was a recipe for potential disaster – but it resulted in a powerful cultural movement that flamed, ruled, and burned out all in the space of seven exciting years.

THE SHOW’S THE THING: LEGENDARY PROMOTERS OF ROCK MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Directors: Molly Bernstein, Philip Dolin

Country: USA, Running Time: 97 min

When legendary talent agent Frank Barsalona handpicked promoters around the country to feature his musical acts beginning in the 1960s, he changed the shape of live music performance forever and helped skyocket the likes of the Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, David Bowie and Bon Jovi into superstardom.

TIME AND PLACE NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

Director: Simon David

Country: USA, Running Time: 75 min

Time And Place is a moving portrait of Lee Moses, soul musician wonder forgotten by his hometown Atlanta. Lee Moses made one album and about thirty songs. Most of them were covers. He acquired the status of legend by deep soul record collectors and general music fans. His hometown Atlanta having forgotten him, this is the portrait of a man who was a good friend and brother.

TOMMY EMANUEL: THE ENDLESS ROAD MIDWEST PREMIERE

Director: Jeremy Dylan Potts

Country: Australia, Running Time: 80 min

From the Australian outback to Music City USA, a child guitar prodigy dedicates his life to become the world’s greatest acoustic guitarist, even as revelations of dark family secrets send him into a battle with addiction that threatens to destroy his career, his family and his life. Featuring interviews with Barry Gibb, Steve Vai, John Oates, Olivia Newton-John and Joe Satriani.

WHEN IT BREAKS MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Todd Tue

Country: USA, Running Time: 67 min

Film follows the inspiring story of Special Education teacher Konrad Wert (aka Possessed by Paul James) and his personal journey to avoid becoming another victim of teacher burnout. Stepping away from the classroom, Wert turns to his musical side career as a means to tour the country with his family and engage teachers, parents, and audiences in a conversation about the current state of Special Education. As opportunities arise, Konrad must decide how his service is most effective- as an advocating artist or as a teacher in the classroom.

WHO LET THE DOGS OUT MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Brent Hodge

Country: Canada, Running Time: 61 min

“Who Let the Dogs Out” is a song that has transcended generations, and has led Ben Sisto to dedicate eight years exploring and exposing a story steeped in show business, legal battles, female empowerment, artistic integrity and one very catchy hook. This documentary follows Sisto on his popular live talks across North America that explain the story of “Who Let The Dogs Out” accompanied by a museum of over 250 pieces of ephemera relating to the song and its origins.

X: THE UNHEARD MUSIC SPECIAL SCREENING

Director: W.T. Morgan

Country: USA, Running Time: 84 min

What a band. What a concert movie. Shot over the course of five years, this documentary presents spectacular live performances interspersed with interviews with the band members and associates.

YOU GAVE ME A SONG: THE TIME AND MUSIC OF ALICE GERRARD MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Kenny Dalsheimer

Country: USA, Running Time: 78 min

An intimate portrait of old-time music pioneer Alice Gerrard and her remarkable, unpredictable journey creating and preserving traditional music. The film follows eighty-four-year old Gerrard over several years, weaving together verité footage of living room rehearsals, recording sessions, songwriting, archival work, and performances with photos and rare field recordings.

Short Films

A Beautiful Mess

Director: Matt Marlinski

Country: USA, Running Time: 26 min

A VICTIM OF SOCIETY – AMNESIA MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Dimitris Kotselis

Country: Greece, Running Time: 4 min

BRONCHO – BIG CITY BOYS MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Richard Farmer

Country: USA, Running Time: 4 min

CALL-IN

Director: Ethan Vander Broek, Curtis Craven

Country: USA, Running Time: 9 min

CHRISTMAS ON THE MOON MIDWEST PREMIERE

Director: Lado Kvataniya

Country: Russian Federation, Running Time: 7 min

COCAINE MARCH MIDWEST PREMIERE

Director: Ilya Belov

Country: Russian Federation, Running Time: 4 min

CULLEN’S TICKET TO RIDE

Director: Justin Atkinson

Country: USA, Running Time: 9 min

DANIEL LAURENT – OUTSIDE MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Jeffrey Palmer

Country: USA, Running Time: 4 min

GUSTAAAKH MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Vijesh Rajan

Country: India, Running Time: 4 min

HIRAETH EP MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Joel Porter

Country: USA, Running Time: 22 min

INSTRUMENTS IN THE ARCHITECTURE: BUILDING THE PIANODROME MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Directors: Will Hewitt, Austen McCowan

Country: UK, Running Time: 13 min

KATE SCHELL – YOU AND YOUR SHADOW MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Nick Rush

Country: USA, Running Time: 5 min

KISS ME MALIBU MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Mikel Arraiz

Country: Spain, Running Time: 4 min

LET THE BLONDE SING MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Rachel Knoll

Country: USA, Running Time: 14 min

LOSS LEADER – INDIVISIBLE MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Nick Rush

Country: USA, Running Time: 5 min

LOST WEEKEND MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Directors: Bradford Thomason, Brett Whitcomb

Country: USA, Running Time: 14 min

MIKE MAIMOME – THROUGH THE CHANGE MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Nick Rush

Country: USA, Running Time: 5 min

MUSIC FOR FREE

Directors: Keenan Desplanques, Ben Weaver

Country: USA, Running Time: 22 min

THE MUSIC SOUNDS BETTER WITH WHOM: THE IMPACT OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ON THE MUSIC EXPERIENCE MIDWEST PREMIERE

Director: Chasson Gracie

Countries: Canada/Japan/USA, Running Time: 19 min

MUTTS MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Nick Rush

Country: USA, Running Time: 4 min

THE ODYSSEY OF CLEVE EATON MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Kevin Webb

Country: USA, Running Time: 4 min

ORBIT MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Tess Martin

Country: USA, Running Time: 7 min

RADIO VOORWARTS MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Mateo Vega

Country: Netherlands, Running Time: 20 min

SNOW ABOVE THE EARTH MIDWEST PREMIERE

Director: Ilya Belov

Country: Russian Federation, Running Time: 8 min

VOYAGE INTO THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Martin Mirabel, Mariano Nante

Country: USA, Running Time: 32 min

WOMXN MINNESOTA PREMIERE

Director: Adrian Gystere Peskine

Country: France, Running Time: 5 min

Walker Arts Center and Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series Present the World Premiere of Commissioned Music/Theater work In Your Mouth by Ted Hearne

With Real Time Installation by Conceptual Artist Rachel Perry and Stage Direction by Daniel Fish

The lush, stingingly true poetry of Dorothea Lasky has inspired composer Ted Hearne‘s new theatrical song cycle, igniting hearts and minds with ferocity and grace. With frank observations of the everyday intertwined with revelatory maneuverings of his own voice, Hearne’s music—a smart mélange of traditional and contemporary tonalities with an accessible pop sheen—is backed by a quintet of in-demand musicians. This intimate 12-song suite engages audiences in a complicated, loving meditation on the personal and domestic, while savoring the depths of the wildness within. Intensifying the performance is real-time installation by conceptual artist Rachel Perry (shown above: Perry’s Blue Falling, 2019) and stage direction by Daniel Fish.

“What began as a personal, visceral connection to the stark and emotional poetry of Dorothea Lasky turned into a set of songs that explores wildness within the eye of the beholder,” says Hearne. “I’m so excited and grateful to be working with the brilliant Rachel Perry and Daniel Fish, who with their perspectives each bring incredible rigor and beauty to this project. Working with the Walker as a commissioning and presenting partner is a dream come true and I’m honored to participate in their rich programming.”

Co-commissioned and copresented by the SPCO’s Liquid Music Series and the Walker Art Center, The world premiere performances take place Thursday, November 21 and Friday, November 22 at 8pm in the Walker Arts Center’s McGuire Theater. Tickets are $26 ($20.80 Walker members).

The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music Series, named “Best of Classical” by The New York Times, develops innovative new projects with iconoclastic artists in unique presentation formats. Liquid Music performances invite adventurous audiences to discover the new and the fascinating within the flourishing landscape of contemporary chamber music. Visit liquidmusic.org to learn more.

Composer, singer, bandleader and recording artist Ted Hearne (b.1982, Chicago) draws on a wide breadth of influences ranging across music’s full terrain, to create intense, personal and multi-dimensional works. The New York Times has praised Mr. Hearne for his “tough edge and wildness of spirit,” and “topical, politically sharp-edged works.” Pitchfork called Hearne’s work “some of the most expressive socially engaged music in recent memory—from any genre,” and Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker that Hearne’s music “holds up as a complex mirror image of an information-saturated, mass-surveillance world, and remains staggering in its impact.” Hearne’s album Sound From the Bench, a cantata for choir, electric guitars and drums setting texts from U.S. Supreme Court oral arguments and inspired by the idea of corporate personhood, was a finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize. Ted Hearne’s latest release and first album of solo and chamber works, Hazy Heart Pump, is now available on New Focus Recordings.

Born in Tokyo, Japan, Rachel Perry’s work is held in numerous museums and private collections around the world, including the Museum of Fine Arts and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the List Visual Arts Center at MIT. Perry has received four Fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, has been to Yaddo and ArtOmi, and was Artist-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in October of 2014, beginning an affiliation that continues today. She is a three-time recipient of the Massachusetts Cultural Council Award for Excellence, the only artist in its history to win in three separate disciplines: Photography, Drawing, and Sculpture. Perry was a Finalist for the Foster Prize at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, in 2006.

Dorothea Lasky was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri. She earned a BA at Washington University and an MFA at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She has published five collections of poetry including AWE (2007), and Black Life (2010), and Thunderbird (2012), as well as one book of prose. Her poems have appeared in a number of prominent publications, including the New Yorker, Paris Review, and American Poetry Review. Known for her colloquial, even slangy style and dramatic readings, Lasky acknowledges that “there is a kind of arrogance, a kind of supreme power, that when infused with a little real humility and expertise, makes a poem. Because the poem is always about the speaker.” Lasky was awarded a Bagley Wright Fellowship in 2013, and she is an assistant professor of poetry at Columbia University.

Daniel Fish is a New York-based director who makes work across the boundaries of theater, film, and opera. He draws on a broad range of forms and subject matter including plays, film scripts, contemporary fiction, essays and found audio. His recent work includes White Noise, inspired by the novel by Don DeLillo ( Ruhrfestspiele Recklingshausen), Michael Gordon’s opera, Acquanetta (Prototype Festival), Don’t Look Back (The Chocolate Factory), Who Left This Fork Here (Baryshnikov Arts Center, Onassis Center), Ted Hearne’s The Source (BAM NEXT WAVE, L.A Opera, San Francisco Opera), Oklahoma! (Bard Summerscape), and ETERNAL. He is a graduate of Northwestern University’s Department of Performance Studies and has taught at The Juilliard School, Bard College, Princeton University, and the Department of Design for Stage and Film at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. He is the recipient of the 2017 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for the Theater.

Renowned for its artistic excellence, remarkable versatility of musical styles and adventurous programming, the Grammy Award-winning Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is widely regarded as one of the finest chamber orchestras in the world. Now in its 61st season, the SPCO has recently undergone transformational change with the opening of its new home, the Ordway Concert Hall, the addition of a new generation of players and significant changes in its artistic vision. The SPCO is nationally recognized for its commitment to broad community accessibility, its innovative audience outreach efforts, its pioneering Liquid Music Series and its educational and family programming. Visit www.thespco.org to learn more.

Known for presenting today’s most compelling artists from close to home and around the world, the Walker Art Center features a broad array of contemporary visual arts, music, dance, theater, and moving image works. Ranging from concerts and films to exhibitions and workshops, Walker programs bring us together to examine the questions that shape and inspire us as individuals, cultures, and communities. The adjacent Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, one of the first urban sculpture parks of its kind in the United States, holds at its center the beloved Twin Cities landmark Spoonbridge and Cherry by Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen as well as some 60 sculptures on the 19-acre Walker campus. Visit www.walkerart.org for more information on upcoming events and programs.

The Walker Art Center’s Performing Arts programs are made possible by generous support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation through the Doris Duke Performing Arts Fund, the William and Nadine McGuire Commissioning Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Producers’ Council Performing Arts programs and commissions at the Walker are generously supported by members of the Producers’ Council: Nor Hall and Roger Hale; King’s Fountain/Barbara Watson Pillsbury and Henry Pillsbury; Sarah Lutman and Rob Rudolph; Emily Maltz; Dr. William W. and Nadine M. McGuire; Leni and David Moore, Jr./The David and Leni Moore Family Foundation; Annie and Peter Remes; Therese Sexe and David Hage; and Mike and Elizabeth Sweeney.

Related Event
Pre-performance Reading by Dorothea Lasky
Thursday, November 21, 7–7:30 pm
Cityview Bar, outside the McGuire Theater

Tickets are $26 ($20.80 Walker members). For more information, call the box office at 612.375.7600 or visit online at walkerart.org/tickets. Join the Walker Members receive a 20% discount on performance tickets. Call 612.375.7655 or visit walkerart.org/membership.

Buy in Bulk Buy a season package of four performances and save 25%— Walker members save 30%. Students—Come Early $10 rush tickets are available starting one hour before the show. Limit one ticket per person with valid student ID.

Get Together Bring 10 or more of your students, friends, and associates and get a 15% discounted group rate, available online and at the box office. Drinks and Dining Enjoy dinner at Esker Grove before the show, or grab a drink at the Cityview Room Bar an hour before or after the performance.

Meet the Artists The Walker offers a range of ways to interact with some of the most innovative artists and performers of our time.

Free Gallery Admission Extend your art experience—come back with your ticket within six months of a performance and receive free admission to the Walker galleries.

Walker Performing Arts For more on Performing Arts, visit https://walkerart.org/visit/stage/.

Accessibility Assistive listening devices are available for events in the McGuire Theater and can be borrowed from the lobby desk. ASL interpretation, audio description, and CART captioning are available and can be arranged for any Walker event with at least two weeks advance notice. For more information, call 612.375.7564 or e-mail access@walkerart.org.

LIQUID MUSIC ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Liquid Music Season Sponsors: Agra Culture Kitchen, SotaRol, Renaissance Minneapolis Hotel, the Depot, The Augustine Foundation, Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University, The Amphion Foundation

Liquid Music Partners: Amsterdam Bar & Hall, Radio K, American Swedish Institute, The Summit Center for Arts & Innovation, The Parkway, Jayme Halbritter Photography, Walker Art Center