North Dakota Museum of Art EWA TARSIA, GALA SATURDAY EVENING OPENING AUGUST 23, 2008, 7 PM On this August evening, the Museum will come alive with color at Ewa Tarsia’s celebratory opening of her exhibition Absolute Dot. Polish born and educated, this Canadian artist will be exhibiting both monoprints and relief paintings. Whereas she works in diverse media including painting, sculpture, tapestry, landscape design, and drawing, she is known internationally as a printmaker. She has showed in international print biennials in Spain, France, Poland, Austria, United States, England, Germany, Japan, and Korea. Most recently, Tarsia was included in the New York’s International Print Center’s NEW PRINTS 2008/Summer. This exhibition represents the evolution of Tarsia’s printmaking into personal techniques that meld the actual lucite printing plate into relief paintings on canvas.
Ewa Tarsia, detail, OVERPOPULATED (1,000 paintings), 2008, new media on canvas.
Ewa Tarsia’s studio, summer 2008.
As a printmaker, Tarsia is part of a tradition of artists who acknowledge that their plates—the pieces of metal, plastic, wood and linoleum that they print from—are the true objects of their affection. Covered with marks, lines, and subtle traces of color, printing plates are often as interesting as the images pulled from them. Each plate is visually complex, offering a fully active and engaged surface that, once transformed into sculpture, reveals both the artist’s obsessive process and the beauty that motivates her to continue. As an environmentalist, Tarsia sees the irony of using plastic and paper to create images that celebrate the beauty of the natural world. “It reflects our society,” she says of the work. “Plastic is everywhere.” The success of her artistic career in Canada was celebrated in June 2007 when she was inducted into the Royal Academy of Arts. The success of her passion for garden design was celebrated in the January 2008 issue of Manitoba Gardner. Thus, it is fitting that the Museum galleries will resemble the blaze of color and the plant complexity of a summer garden, just as her own Winnipeg garden is known far and wide for both its brilliant color and the plethora of plants that are only supposed to flourish much further south. Her husband Ludwik grows rhododendrons; Ewa grows everything else.
EXHIBITION CONTINUES THROUGH OCTOBER 5, 2008
REMEMBERING DAKOTA
CLOSES
AUGUST 12, 2008
“I came to North Dakota because I wanted to see where Teddy Roosevelt went after his wife died. It turned out to be a place where you could empty your soul into the sky,” writes American landscape photographer Greg Conniff. He is one of thirty-six artists from across the United States whose work is included in Remembering Dakota, on view this summer at the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks. Curated by Museum Director Laurel Reuter, this timely exhibition adds another chapter to the history of art in and of North Dakota.
Nancy Friese, RIVER, Etching on Gampi paper, Edition 1 of 40, 15 x 15 inches.
Artists in the exhibition: Marlene Alt, Tom Arndt, Todd Arsenault, Jeff Brouws, Wendy Burton, Greg Conniff, Ward Davenny, Lynn Davis, Joe Deal, James Dean, Jim Dow, Terry Evans, Charles Forsman, Nancy Friese, Emmet Gowin, David Graham, Gudmundur Ingólfsson, Todd Hebert, Abner Hershberger, Stuart Klipper, Peter Latner, Brian Lesteberg, Roddy MacInnes, Guy Nelson, Justin Newhall, Anna Pedersen, Robert Polidori, Dirk Reinartz, Ingrid Restemayer, Frank Sampson, Fritz Scholder, Jes Schrom, Paul Shambroom, Todd Strand, Peter Haakon Thompson, and Steve Tourlentes.
TAKING ART AS FAR AS 400 MILES RURAL SCHOOL INITIATIVE SCHEDULE Marking the Land: Jim Dow in North Dakota Minnewaukan, July 16 – 30, 2008 Former St. James Church Pre-school Whapeton, September 4 - 21, 2008 Richland County Historical Society Ellendale, October 7 – 26, 2008 The Opera House Gallery of Art
Snow Country Prison: Interned in North Dakota Ft. Totten, July 14 - Aug. 29, 2008 Cankdeska Cikana Community College Pekin, October 5 – 18, 2008 Nelson County Art Center Ellendale, October 29 – Nov. 11, 2008 The Opera House Gallery of Art For booking information Contact Matt Wallace 701 777-4195 mwallace@ndmoa.com
FROM THE
MUSEUM
THE RURAL SCHOOL INITIATIVE is an educational outreach program that began as a pilot project in 2004 with $25,000 from the State Legislature. It is designed to encourage and empower rural school children, their teachers, and their communities to actively participate in learning through the arts. Specifically, the North Dakota Museum of Art tours exhibitions tied to classroom curriculum throughout North Dakota, and then works to engage rural children, their families, and their communities in an on-going relationship with the art in the exhibitions and the ideas that are integral to each show. The exhibits are mounted by Museum staff (using temporary walls built to travel) in whatever available space is offered such as banks, schools, community centers, historical sites, and empty buildings. NDMOA offers training sessions with volunteer docents and teachers, develops on-line lesson plans, and pays for bussing for schools within a fifty-mile radius. NDMOA staff attend the openings. As of October 2007 three exhibitions have been seen in thirty-four towns (as far as 400 miles from the Museum), with an additional 181 participating school districts within a fifty-mile radius of the host community for a total of 14,646 participants. Over 100,000 eight-page tabloids have been inserted into newspapers that serve the small communities (mostly weeklies). The fourth exhibition will begin touring in February 2008. In three short years the Rural Arts program has become enormously successful because it fills an actual need for art in every corner of the State, places where the visual arts are often nonexistent.
ART DOES MATTER UPCOMING DISAPPEARED SCHEDULE Centro de Formación de la Cooperación Española en La Antigua Guatemala May 24 – July 20, 2008 Museo de arte moderno, Bogotá, Colombia August 9 – September 24, 2008 Museum of the Americas, Office of American States, Washington, DC, USA November 20, 2008 – February 8, 2009 Opening November 20, 6 – 8 pm November 17-18, George Washington University, Washington, DC, will sponsor a seminar on torture in conjunction with the exhibition.
THE DISAPPEARED
CONTINUES
LATIN AMERICAN TOUR
The Museum’s exhibition, The Disappeared, opened in Antigua, Guatemala, on May 24. This may prove to be the most important venue of all in that Guatemala is at a critical juncture in coming to terms with its past where unofficial figures state that up to half-a-million Guatemalans were killed in their thirty-five year civil war. The show is sponsored by the Spanish government through the Centro de Formación de la Cooperación Española en La Antigua, which is housed in a splendid, ancient monastery. The young staff raised almost $100,000 to support the show and the activities surrounding it from such places as the Soros Foundation, Oxfam, Ibis, and the United Nations High Commission for Human Rights, with good funding coming from various entities within the Spanish government. The exhibition spaces are a series of loggia, which open into elegant courtyards. Because Antigua is a World Heritage Site founded in the early 16th century, no nails could be driven into the original structure. Installation was a challenge for the team of five from the North Dakota Museum of Art, but ultimately it became a powerful and elegant exhibition. The Ambassador from Spain and the Guatemala Representative for the UN High Commission for Human Rights opened the exhibition to an overflow crowd of hundreds. A few days after the opening, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom came for a private tour. He was followed by the Vice President and a host of ambassadors, including the U.S. Ambassador James M. Derham. Press has been terrific. The Museum’s work has been supported by the Otto Bremer Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Lannan Foundation.
Luis Gonzáles Palma, HERMETIC TENSIONS, 1997, silver gelatin prints.
MUSEUM BOARD
OF
TRUSTEES
David Hasbargen, Chair Kjersti Armstrong, Victoria Beard, David Blehm, Julie Blehm, Ann Brown, Chad Caya, W. Jeremy Davis, Virginia Dunnigan, John Foster, Bruce Gjovig, Jean Holland, Kim Holmes, Sandy Kaul, Rick Mercil, Dianne Mondry, Laurel Reuter, Alex Reichert, Pat Ryan and Wayne Zimmerman EMERITUS TRUSTEES, Corinne Alphson, Barb Lander, Darrell Larson, Robert Lewis, Douglas McPhail, Sanny Ryan, Gerald Skogley, and Anthony Thein
Watch for news of the exhibition in Bogotá, Colombia, another country ripped apart by civil war.
HARRIET
AND
PLAYFORD THORSON established an Endowment for
General Operating through the Museum Foundation with a gift of $10,000. Harriet has volunteered weekly at the Museum since 1989. Now retired, Playford taught history at the University for decades.
MUSEUM FOUNDATION BOARD Betty Monkman, Chair W. Jeremy Davis, Kevin Fickenscher, Nancy Friese, Bruce Gjovig, Daniel E. Gustafson, David Hasbargen, Margery McCanna Jennison, Laurel Reuter and Al Royse
MARY LUCIER: THE PLAINS OF SWEET REGRET TO TOUR TO WESTERN NORTH DAKOTA THIS FALL Williston: September 11 (opening) – 21, Co-sponsored with Chamber of Commerce. Diane Hagen, Executive Director will chair the event. � Dickinson: October 2 (opening) – 12, Museum Trustee Kjersti Armstrong will chair the event. � Bismarck: Tentative date, October 23 – November 2, details yet to be work out. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded the Museum $40,000 to partially fund the Western North Dakota Tour primarily because Lucier filmed the work in northwest North Dakota and at the Rough Rider Rodeo in Devils Lake. Following the North Dakota sites, the exhibition will continue its national tour to: � Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas November 15 - February 15, 2009 � Birmingham Museum of Art, April - June, 2009
�
From Mary Lucier: The Plains of Sweet Regret. Five-channel video installation.
Museum Receives $100,000 for its first year in the Bush Foundation’s Regional Arts Development Program II for mid-sized arts organizations. “RADP organizations demonstrate exceptional and distinctive artistic vision and programming, substantial community engagement and constituent support, strong administrative and financial management, a serious commitment to planning and ability to adapt to the changing environment.” The Museum was awarded over $800,000 over ten years during RAPD I. Seven entities, including the Museum, have qualified for RADP II.
THE ANDY WARHOL FOUNDATION AWARDS $50,000 to the North Dakota Museum of Art and Museum Director Laurel Reuter through its inaugural round of the Curatorial Research Program. Reuter will use the money to curate her next international exhibition, this one based in the Middle East. Ten awards were given for a total of $295,500. Only two institutions, including the North Dakota Museum of Art, received the maximum $50,000 allowed.
THE MUSEUM’S SUMMER ARTS DAY CAMP concluded on August 8. All six week-long sessions filled. Thanks to scholarship supporters, one youngster from Rwanda, two from Uganda, one from Iraq, and many local children were able to attend. The camps were conducted by working artists Memo Guardia, Adam Kemp, Greg Blair, Nancy Friese, Mike Hazard and Museum Director of Education Sue Fink.
FINAL SUMMER CONCERT IN THE GARDEN POST TRAUMATIC FUNK SYNDROME AUGUST 26, 2008, 7 PM Post Traumatic Funk Syndrome (left) is Fargo's newest and hottest classic rock/horn band. This twelve-piece group (six horns, keyboards, bass, drums, guitar, male and female vocals) performs the best of classic horn band hits.
SAVE THE DATES: Autumn Art Auction, October 25, 2008, exhibition opens October 14 Benefit Dinner and Auction, February 7, 2009