February 17–June 11, 2017
Opening: February 16, 5–8pm
Brandeis University
415 South Street
Waltham, MA 02453
www.brandeis.edu
Fred Eversley: Black, White, Gray
Tommy Hartung: King Solomon’s Mines
Collection at Work
Rose Video 10: Ana Mendieta
Reflections: Louise Nevelson, 1967
The Rose Art Museum announces the opening of its spring exhibitions on February 17. A reception will be held from 5 to 8pm on February 16 and is free and open to the public.
About the exhibitions
A Brooklyn native and engineer by training, Fred Eversley (b. 1941) moved to Los Angeles in 1963 to work in the aerospace industry; four years later, inspired by the burgeoning bohemian culture in Venice Beach, he decided to shift careers and become an artist. This exhibition examines a series of exquisite black, white, and gray “lens” sculptures from the 1970s, shown together for the first time. With their complex optical properties and intimate, human scale, the works in Fred Eversley: Black, White, Gray challenge our perception of the world and prompt us to consider how we ascribe meaning to color. The exhibition, curated by Kim Conaty, is a collaboration between Art + Practice and the Rose.
Tommy Hartung (b. 1979) investigates mythmaking and storytelling tied to powers of surveillance, wealth, and politics in his most comprehensive solo museum exhibition to date. A presentation of sculptures and Polaroid photographs accompanies the display of a new video, King Solomon’s Mines. Against the backdrop of the Tibesti Mountains, a harsh landscape traversed by both safari tourists and the region’s impoverished migrants, Hartung transposes the legend of King Solomon to create a fable that rings true for a modern era. Tommy Hartung: King Solomon’s Mines is co-curated by Kim Conaty and Caitlin Julia Rubin.
Collection at Work invites visitors to take an unprecedented look at some of the most important work of the museum: the study and stewardship of artworks under its care. The exhibition will be organized as a series of workstations in which an ever-changing selection of works from the Rose’s renowned collection will be photographed, catalogued, re-housed, and conserved, all in plain sight. Supporting the Rose’s mission statement, which affirms and advances values of diversity and social justice, this stewardship project focuses on works by women and African-American artists, as well as the museum’s rich but lesser known collections of photography and unique works on paper. These noteworthy collections deepen and complicate our understanding of accepted narratives within art history, offering a fascinating group of works with which our community can engage.
Rose Video 10: Ana Mendieta presents the powerful short film Sweating Blood (1973), by Cuban-American Ana Mendieta (1948–85). This special presentation explores two sides of Mendieta’s experiments with performance, pairing the film with the Rose’s Body Tracks (1982), the iconic triptych of body drawings made during a performance at Franklin Furnace, New York.
Finally, Reflections: Louise Nevelson, 1967 looks back at Nevelson’s first retrospective, which opened at the Rose Art Museum in 1967. Organized in collaboration with the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Rose’s exhibition was unique for the degree to which Louise Nevelson (1899–1988) staged its presentation: under her direction, the galleries were transformed into an encompassing environment for her work. In addition to previously un-exhibited archival materials, a computer-generated model of Nevelson’s 1967 exhibition (created by students at Brandeis University’s MakerLab) allows visitors multiple windows into this groundbreaking show.
Featured program
February 28, 6pm
Wasserman Cinematheque, Brandeis University
Okwui Enwezor, Director, Haus der Kunst, Munich, and Artistic Director of the 65th Venice Biennale and Documenta 11, will speak about his curatorial projects in a discussion moderated by Professor Salah Hassan, Madeleine Haas Russell Visiting Professor, Department of African and Afro-American Studies and Department of Fine Arts, Brandeis University.
Sponsored by the Department of Fine Arts, Department of African and Afro-American Studies, and the Rose Art Museum
For more information on the Rose’s spring exhibitions and programs, please visit the museum’s website.
Press Inquiries: Nina Berger, [email protected] / T 617 543 1595
These exhibitions and associated programs are made possible through funding from the Lois Foster Exhibition and Rose Art Exhibit Endowment Funds. Fred Eversley: Black, White, Gray is made possible through the generosity of Pamela J. Joyner and Alfred J. Giuffrida.
