Upcoming Exhibitions
Taking in the View: English Watercolors and Prints
August 27 – December 7, 2008
Free exhibition
This intimate exhibition features approximately 25 watercolors and prints from the BMA’s collection that show the transformation of landscapes in the late 18th- and early 19th- century. These works—including several new additions to the collection—range from views of specific topography by animalier Robert Hills and Victorian artist Louise Rayner to idealized, imaginary visions by amateur artist and country surgeon John White Abbott. During the next 100 years, these two conceptions merged and images of landscapes such as J.M.W. Turner’s stunning Grenoble Bridge (c. 1824) reached new heights of expressive power and beauty.
Curated by Ann Shafer, Assistant Curator of Prints, Drawings & Photographs.
Right: Franz West. Swimmer. 2005. Fanny B. Thalheimer Memorial Fund, BMA 2008.16
Franz West, To Build a House You Start with the Roof: Work, 1972-2008
October 12, 2008 – January 4, 2009
The Baltimore Museum of Art presents the first major U.S. retrospective on Franz West (b. 1947), an Austrian artist of international stature whose singular vision has resulted in one of the most remarkable bodies of work produced since the 1960s. The exhibition includes more than 120 objects that reflect his innovations in sculpture, design, and works on paper—ranging from early interactive works from the 1970s to recent giant aluminum and epoxy objects that dramatize their surroundings with bold colors and oversize scale.
For the past three decades, West has played a critical role in redefining the possibilities of sculpture as a social and environmental experience. Coming out of the powerful performance art scene led by the Viennese Actionists during the 1960s, West developed an early interest in the potential of objects to trigger an array of psychological states and experiences. His manipulation of found materials, papier-mâché, and furniture is unlike any other in appearance and application. Though fundamentally sculptural in their construction, his works veer towards the biomorphic and prosthetic and possess an awkward beauty that speaks with equal fluency to the aesthetics of painterly abstraction and trash art.
The exhibition features rarely seen examples of West’s work covering more than 30 years, organized as a series of mini-installations that reflect West’s experimental approach to space and artistic groupings. Visitors encounter, and can occasionally touch, a range of objects, such as a dramatic installation of two oversized sculptural chairs that invite visitors to take a seat amidst the art. The exhibition begins with the most recent objects, including wallpaper that doubles as a series of exhibition posters, simultaneously decorating and advertising the space. Subsequent galleries feature furniture/objects such as cabinets, tables, and chairs that infuse the art environment with the culture of bars, cafés, and domestic life (1990s), a large room of papier-mâché groupings with an installation of free-standing sculptures on suitcase bases (1980-1990s), and a gallery of stand-alone works. In the final Adaptives section (1970s), visitors can handle human-scaled plaster sculptures in a space tinged by the violet hue of West’s floor lamps. The exhibition closes with a space that explores the production of West’s art and the operation of his studio.
An illustrated catalogue co-published with MIT Press includes essays by BMA Senior Curator of Contemporary Art Darsie Alexander, curator Tom Eccles, and artist Rachel Harrison.
This exhibition is curated by Darsie Alexander, BMA Senior Curator of Contemporary Art.
This exhibition is generously supported by Howard Brown, The Alvin and Fanny Blaustein Thalheimer Exhibition Endowment Fund, and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts Constance R. Caplan, Suzanne F. Cohen and the Suzanne F. Cohen Exhibition Fund, and Stiles Tuttle Colwill and Jonathan Gargiulo, Nancy Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff, Ellen W. P. Wasserman, BMA Friends of Modern and Contemporary Art , Sandra Levi Gerstung, an anonymous donor, Sylvia Cordish, and Monroe Denton.
Additional support provided by Austrian Airlines and The Austrian Cultural Forum, New York
Front Room: Dieter Roth & Rachel Harrison
October 12, 2008 – January 4, 2009
Free exhibition
The BMA’s experimental project space pairs the work of Dieter Roth (German, 1930–1998) and Rachel Harrison (American, b. 1966), to coincide with the BMA’s exhibition on Franz West. Separated by generations and continents, the featured artists overlap both formally and conceptually in an array of approximately 10 to 15 two-and three-dimensional works. Both draw inspiration from the stuff of everyday life, ranging from daily cast-offs and bric-a-brac to magazine pictures. Roth takes a simple postcard and transforms it into a glittery pastiche of images that embrace the abstract as well as the photographic. Harrison, whose work was featured in the Whitney Biennial 2008, fashions three-dimensional forms that range from the bulbous to architectonic. In their connections to Franz West, Harrison is a contributor to the exhibition and Roth was a friend and participant in the art scene of Vienna, where West still resides.
Curated by Darsie Alexander, Senior Curator of Contemporary Art.
