Museum of Art: A Decade Committed to Sustainability in the Visual Arts

A DECADE COMMITTED TO SUSTAINABILITY IN THE VISUAL ARTS 2011-2021

IMAGE: Yu-Wen Wu: High-Water Mark , 2019

MUSEUM OF ART

WHO WE ARE

INTERDISCIPLINARY AND COLLABORATIVE EXHIBITIONS 2011-2021

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE VISUAL ARTS INTERDISCIPLINARY AND COLLABORATIVE EXHIBITIONS

JON IMBER: HUMAN INTEREST

A PHOTOGRAPHER'S EMBRACE: STEPHEN DIRADO

MADE MASCULINE: READY TO BE REMADE

SEPTEMBER 4-OCTOBER 19, 2014

OCTOBER 26-DECEMBER 15, 2017

AUGUST 30-OCTOBER 15, 2017

Jon Imber: Human Interest presents portraits by an acclaimed Massachusetts and Maine-based painter completed in the years before and in the months after his 2012 diagnosis with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) commonly referred to as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. The portraits, painted with the artist’s commanding expressive gestures, intimately record Imber’s time with friends and family, displaying physical traces of likeness informed by memories, history, mythology, and the artist’s own selfawareness.

A photographic journal that vividly articulates a son’s connections, captured through his camera, as his father succumbs to Alzheimer’s. A Photographer’s Embrace: Stephen DiRado Features a selections from the Worcester artist’s body of work and includes photographs, film, and projected images. Known for his humanistic outlook and photographic series, DiRado’s work evolved from straight photography of people and places to intimate, empathetic images made in collaboration with his subjects. This is the first museum exhibition devoted to the artist’s thirty-five-year artistic career.

Jon Imber died April 17, 2014.

Commonly, masculinity is synonymous with strength and virility. Such characteristics permeate representations of men and lived pressures of what men are told they should be.

Made Masculine’s framework accepts the idea of masculinity as simply that: made, fashioned, and repackaged generation to generation. Despite the rigidity of a seemingly singular ideal image of manhood fabricated from the tenets of patriarchy, the artists in this exhibition posit that masculinities are multifaceted and shaped by other factors like age, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, and geography.

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE VISUAL ARTS INTERDISCIPLINARY AND COLLABORATIVE EXHIBITIONS

THE PRINTS OF JACQUES CALLOT AND MILLIE CHEN’S WALLPAPER AUGUST 30- OCTOBER 15, 2017

Chen’s The Miseries & Vengeance Wallpapers reproduces the imagery used in Jacques Callot’s original prints as wallpaper, printed from high-resolution digital photographs. What initially appear to be decorative walls are revealed to be a provocative dialogue between two sets of images. The exquisitely horrific imagery was culled from a set of historic etchings, The Miseries and Misfortunes of War by printmaker Jacques Callot (1592-1635) that documented the Thirty Years' War. An early recorder of the atrocities of war and social injustice, Callot influenced the likes of Francisco Goya (1746-1842), a fellow observer of human folly and cruelty.

KENYATTA A.C. HINKLE: LOOKIN' WHERE IT AIN'T AUGUST 30-OCTOBER 15, 2017

Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle manipulates language, images, and myths combining them to create a personal narrative.

Unapologetic in her repurposing of racist symbols and images, Hinkle draws power from them by taking ownership of the prevailing narrative, one of subjugation and submission of the African and African American female body. In The Uninvited Series, she reworks 19th-Century French colonial ethnographic postcards of African women that communicated stereotypes of uncivil, sexualized “natives” to French citizens. The postcards served to support France’s imperial ambitions, asserting French urban superiority over a rural populace.

NOBODY/SOMEBODY FEBRUARY 1- APRIL 2, 2021

The subjects in Nobody/Somebody include powerful portraits, ordinary moments, and extraordinary events representing a range of emotions with an emphasis on empathy and vulnerability. The photographs are organized thematically around four social justice topics: race and ethnicity, gender and identity, migration and immigration, and ability.

The groupings allow visitors to make associations and connections from the images and experiences depicted to the present day. In the act of photographing peoples’ likenesses and paying notice to their circumstances, these photographers recognize that people are inspiring, engrossing, that everyone is somebody and worthy of our attention.

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE VISUAL ARTS INTERDISCIPLINARY AND COLLABORATIVE EXHIBITIONS

CHRIS JORDAN: RUNNING THE NUMBERS

WILLIE COLE: ON-SITE

TOXIC YOUTH: DANA JENNINGS '80

JANUARY 28- APRIL 4, 2012

AUGUST 30-0CTOBER 15, 2017

FEBRUARY 1- APRIL 2, 2021

Cosponsored by the UNH Sustainability Academy and the Museum of Art, this large format digital photography exhibition illuminates the consequences of some of our cultural choices, making visible what simple statistics cannot. Both imaginative and documentary in presentation, each image portrays a specific quantity of something: 15 million sheets of office paper (5 minutes of paper use); 106,000 aluminum cans (30 seconds of can consumption) and so on.

Chris Jordan has stated, “My hope is that the photographs can serve as portals to a kind of cultural self-inquiry.”

This exhibition featured nineteen three-dimensional artworks, which Cole created from 2006 through 2016, and focuses on three main materials: found wood, used shoes, and recycled water bottles. Two of those materials, shoes and water bottles, represent objects that we use and discard. They contain residue from the individuals who have used those objects; the shoe keeps the shape, sweat, and smell of the person who wore it, while the bottles contain the individual’s DNA (breath, spit, and soul). His works of art explore and reference African art and culture, slavery in America and icons of American pop culture and consumer culture.

Toxic Youth features Jennings' sketchbooks that recall his experiences and memories of his youth, working with his father at Kingston Steel Drum factory.

Jennings scoured industrial 55gallon steel drums used to hold paint and motor oil, pesticides, and other chemicals. The factory shut down by the EPA in the early 1980s became a Superfund hazardous waste site. Jennings has nearly been killed by ulcerative colitis, aggressive prostate cancer, and copes with a second autoimmune disease, which causes weeping wounds to erupt on his lower abdomen from the inside out. Jennings’ father struggles with metastatic colon cancer and emphysema.

Many of the chemicals Jennings came in contact with are linked with such diseases.

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE VISUAL ARTS INTERDISCIPLINARY AND COLLABORATIVE EXHIBITIONS;

YU-WEN WU: HIGH WATER MARK APRIL 19-MAY 26, 2019

High-Water Mark is a multimedia, regionally specific installation by Boston-based artist Yu-Wen Wu whose experiences as an immigrant have shaped the themes of her work: examining issues of displacement, movement, assimilation, culture and identity. The exhibition was installed at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, NH. High-Water Mark utilizes the visualization of data to focus on rising sea levels, storm surge flooding, and the projected displacement of people who live in the New Hampshire and Maine sea coast region. Wu sees the relationships between natural and built environments and cultural systems that will help us navigate a changing ecosystem and an environment in flux.

LONG EYE JANUARY 25-MARCH 31, 2018

Long Eye presents works of art created in response to the sights, sounds, and climate of both the Arctic and Antarctica.

Exploration is at the heart of the multi-sensory works of art whether contemplating failed expeditions or responding artistically to personal experiences in the polar regions, the exhibiting artists attempt to disrupt perceptions of scale, place, and time and offer alternatives to understanding the fragile environments at the ends of the Earth. These remote places hold fascination and wonder, attracting artists, researchers, and explorers with its harsh weather, perilous conditions, and extreme beauty.

JOO LEE KANG: UNNATURALLY BEAUTIFUL NOVEMBER 1- DECEMBER 14, 2014

Joo Lee Kang’s intricately rendered drawings seduce with their opulence and abundance while expressing the artist’s concerns about the fragility of the earth’s ecosystems. She uses a vernacular of ornamentation— lavish wallpaper and decorative ceramics— to suggest historical periods of decadence and luxurious material consumption.

Upon closer examination the charm fades revealing malformed animals with multiple appendages and misshapen features, or exacting depictions of caterpillars, spiders, and beetles. The close-up views of insects and genetic mutations attract as much as they repel the viewer’s attention raising questions about human impact on the environment.

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE VISUAL ARTS INTERDISCIPLINARY AND COLLABORATIVE EXHIBITIONS

YOAV HORESH: AFTERMATH JANUARY 24-MARCH 30, 2019

While living in Boston, Yoav Horesh witnessed the events of 9/11 and observed the reactions of ordinary Americans and official responses from the point of view of someone who had grown up with arbitrary violence. The American response led him to consider how societies deal with traumatic events and the role of photography in documenting history and evoking memories of particular times, places, and people. Horesh’s photographs of suicide bombing sites are taken months and sometimes years after destructive blasts, rather than focus on the immediate carnage, he views the repaired landscape, abandoned sites, and the apparent return to normalcy as a symptoms of a society’s desire to erase traumatic events from its collective memory.

MESSANGERS: ARTISTS AS WITNESSES

DAN MILLS: HUMAN TOPOGRAPHIES

JANUARY 24-MARCH 30, 2019

JANUARY 21-APRIL 4, 2020

Messengers: Artists as Witnesses presents the work of ten contemporary artists who give voice to the voiceless, acting as witnesses by revisiting significant, often traumatic events through first-hand accounts or research in an effort to go beyond media reporting. All of the works of art touch upon aspects of criminality, including criminal justice systems, crime scenes, incarceration, as well as the perpetrators and victims of criminal behavior.

Human Topographies presents a narrow slice of Dan Mills’ decades-long interest in using history and exploration to investigate networks of power, trade, and migration that underpin societies. His What’s in a Name series quantifies Indigenous place names found throughout the Americas indicating the enduring presence of peoples who still live, work and shape the world we all inhabit. The Magallanica series presents Antarctica as a piechart overcrowded with countries claiming some standing and ownership of a continent that is melting away.

Mill’s Current Wars and Conflicts paintings look at the magnitude of the suffering and the worldwide migrant crises caused by global armed conflicts.

The art memorializes people, commemorates events, and continues to spark dialogue around critical issues. They are physical reminders of injustice and a call for social change.

WHAT WE DO

INCLUSIVE, INNOVATIVE AND IMPACTFUL PROGRAMMING 2011-2021

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE VISUAL ARTS INCLUSIVE, INNOVATIVE AND IMPACTFUL PROGRAMMING

THE SHOP IS AN EVENT THAT COMBINES CULTURE, CONVERSATION, AND COMMUNICATION TO BUILD RELATIONSHIPS WITHIN THE UNH COMMUNITY. HAIRCUTS ARE A VEHICLE TO BUILD BRIDGES BETWEEN STUDENTS, FACULTY, AND STAFF. THE SHOP COMBINES AMAZING ENERGY, POSITIVE VIBES, THE ENTREPRENEURIAL SPIRIT, AND A DOPE HAIRCUT TO ENSURE THAT FUN NEVER LEAVES THE UNH COMMUNITY.

The first Barber Shop was held February 2017 in the Wildcat Room at the MUB. It was the vision of Andres Meija, UNH Connect Coordinator, and Brandon Thomas, Assistant Athletic Director and Academic Support Services Coordinator. In an effort to help the Shop increase capacity and reach more students, the Museum of Art joined forces with Meija and Thomas to host the second and third barber shop events in October 2017 and October 2018. Each year, five barbers from Richard’s Barber Shop, Dorchester, MA, packed all of their equipment and chairs into a truck to set up shop in the museum. Each event lasted 12 hours, hosted 2 DJs, offered students snacks and pizza, and brought together the UNH community. Each year over 400 students came to the museum and 100+ haircuts were given at no charge.

The events were sponsored by Connect, OMSA, Durham and UNH Police Departments, Diversity Support Coalition, President’s Commission on the Status of People of Color, McNair Scholars Program, Seacoast NAACP, Office of Community, Equity, and Diversity, UNH Associate Professor of Sociology Cliff Brown, Center of Social Innovation and Enterprise, UNH Athletics, and the Museum of Art.

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE VISUAL ARTS INCLUSIVE, INNOVATIVE AND IMPACTFUL PROGRAMMING

FOR FREEDOMS IS A PLATFORM FOR CREATIVE CIVIC ENGAGEMENT, DISCOURSE, AND DIRECT ACTION. FOR FREEDOMS AIMS TO INJECT ANTI-PARTISAN, CRITICAL THINKING THAT FINE ART REQUIRES INTO THE POLITICAL LANDSCAPE THROUGH PROGRAMMING, EXHIBITIONS, AND PUBLIC ARTWORKS.

In 2018 and 2019, the Museum of Art produced 200 lawn signs that were given to students to produce and publicly display their own definition of freedom by filling out signs that say: Freedom Of..., Freedom From..., Freedom For..., and Freedom To… The Four Freedoms outlined by FDR and Norman Rockwell began to articulate the human right to freedom, but the articulation of those freedoms did not apply to everyone. The lawn signs allow every participant to define freedom in their own way and articulate a vision of freedom that contains multitudes.

The Museum of Art and the UNH Civil Discourse Lab designed a Town Hall to create a forum for inclusive public conversations led by students from the Civil Discourse lab. A follow up to the Lawn Signs event on Sept 10, 2019, the dialogue and discussion took place on Oct 2 discussing the most prevalent themes written on the lawn signs. Students from the discourse lab employed an inclusive and supportive framework which focused on fostering civil conversations on these difficult subjects.

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE VISUAL ARTS IMMERSING STUDENTS IN EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING AND RESEARCH

"THE MUSEUM STAFF HAS ENTHUSIASTICALLY WORKED TO OPEN ITS ARCHIVES AND COLLECTION FOR RESEARCH AND INQUIRY AS TO HOW EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES CAN BE USED TO DOCUMENT CULTURAL HERITAGE FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS. THE INSTITUTION HAS THE WILL AND ETHICS TO IMPLEMENT IT TO THE MAXIMUM BENEFIT FOR ITS COLLECTION AS WELL AS THE STUDENTS AND ACADEMICS WORKING WITH THE COLLECTION."

PROF. IVO VAN DER GRAAFF, DEPARTMENT OF ART AND ART HISTORY

Art history professor, Ivo van der Graaff, the first recipient of the College of Liberal Arts Dean’s Award for Technological Creativity in the Curriculum, explored how modern technologies can help to preserve, replicate, and disseminate knowledge of cultural artifacts and archaeological sites in his course From Digging to Digital: Preserving and Displaying the Past. Using objects from the Museum's permanent collection students researched, created 3D digital models, and printed the objects in 3D using the resources available at the Visual Resource Center. They designed web pages to display their models and research in a digital environment and made discoveries accessible outside of the physical museum. This is just one example of the many collaborations between the Museum of Art and the Department of Art and Art History.

WHY WE ARE HERE

ENGAGING AUDIENCES WITH OUR PERMANENT COLLECTION 2011-2021

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE VISUAL ARTS ENGAGING AUDIENCES WITH OUR COLLECTION

AS AN ACADEMIC MUSEUM PROVIDING EXHIBITIONS, PROGRAMS, AND A PERMANENT COLLECTION ACCESSIBLE TO FACULTY FOR TEACHING IN THE VISUAL ARTS, THE MUSEUM OF ART IS A VITALLY IMPORTANT COMPONENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE. OUR ROLE ENCOMPASSES TWO MAJOR AREAS: ACADEMIC AND COMMUNITY OUTREACH.

As a teaching unit, the Museum of Art provides the opportunity for university students, staff, and faculty to gain knowledge and experience in dealing with works of art on a genuine and first-hand basis. As one of the few programs that regularly brings the local community to campus, the Museum of Art provides important outreach and public service functions for the University.

Beyond the walls of the museums, we have participated in a wide-variety of sustainability initiatives, museum staff oversaw the selection, commission, and installation of public art at Paul College, helped organize the student sustainability video contest; conducted and produced selfguided public art walking tours; managed the restoration and reinstallation of Soon the Earth, and the maintenance of the Wildcat bronze sculpture, promoted civic dialogue, freedom of speech at three consecutive U-Day events and is currently facilitating the selection of a mural for the exterior of the PCAC elevator tower.

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE VISUAL ARTS ENHANCING FACULTY INSTRUCTION THROUGH THE MUSEUM’S PERMANENT COLLECTION

FACULTY IN THE HONORS COLLEGE, HUMANITIES, WOMEN STUDIES PROGRAM, ENGLISH, AND ANTHROPOLOGY HAVE ALL UTILIZED THE COLLECTION TO CREATE THOUGHT-PROVOKING EXHIBITS FOR THEIR STUDENTS ON A RICH VARIETY OF TOPICS: WORKING WOMEN, WAR, CULTURAL PROVENANCE, POVERTY, THE HOLOCAUST, AND HOW ARTISTS CONFRONT THE PAST.

MOA staff, working with fellowship students, have developed focused exhibitions from the collection highlighting depictions of Native Americans by Native American artists, work by artists who immigrated to the United States, and topics such as conflict and economic injustice.

There are many ways to access art in the permanent collection: The Collection Study Area allows for selected works of art to be on display for up to 4 weeks.

This gallery allows students to view the art anytime during museum hours.

The Permanent Collection Room allows faculty and students the opportunity to view art from the collection outside of exhibition.

Digital access provides an unlimited number of selected works of art available to students 24/7 and digitization of the entire collection is ongoing.

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE VISUAL ARTS BUILDING AN ENVIROMENT ROOTED IN SUSTAINABILITY

LED GALLERY LIGHTING 2014-2019

THE LULA LIFT: ACCESSIBILITY 2016-2017

HVAC REPLACEMENT 2019-CURRENT

Over the course of five years the Museum of Art replaced all incandescent light fixtures in the galleries with LED lamps and heads at a cost of over $30,000. Not only does the Museum benefit from a more efficient and affordable lighting solution but the new system supports our commitment to the preservation of works of art by reducing harmful UV light.

A dimming system was recently installed which allows for more precise modulations of light levels.

The University of New Hampshire partnered with Charters Brothers to perform major accessibility upgrades to the Museum's gallery. The renovations included a LULA elevator, new stairwell, improvements to the gallery entrance and construction to extend the floor to make a larger landing that allows individuals in wheelchairs to access the elevator have taken place.

The old, inefficient HVAC system for the galleries are now unable to maintain the environmental standards required to exhibit art work according to museum guidelines. The Museum has engaged a mechanical engineer experienced with museum quality climate and building envelope analysis to evaluate the existing system of temperature and humidity monitoring and HVAC controls and equipment. The goal is to determine what conditions the system is capable of providing and what conditions the existing building envelope can tolerate.