The University of Virginia Art Museum presents The Dancer and the Dance an exhibition of prints, drawings, and photographs on view July 29 – December 23, 2011.

Barbara Morgan. American, 1900-1992 Martha Graham: Letter to the World (Swirl), 1940 Gelatin silver print, reprinted 1980, 16 x 20 in, 40.64 x 50.8 cm (sheet) Gift of L. Bradley Camp, 1984.25.200.6 © Barbara Morgan Archives, courtesy of Bruce Silverstein Gallery, NY

In honor of the residency of renowned choreographer Bill T. Jones, The Dancer and the Dance: Prints, Drawings, and Photographs presents images of dance drawn from UVaM’s permanent collection and a private collection. Through the work of artists spanning many centuries to the present, the exhibition explores themes of motion, materiality, and temporality. Photography, for example, captures the most ephemeral and detailed of dance gestures. Great art allows us to understand these subtleties, whether in classical dance or in the visual records of photographers, printmakers, and draftsmen.

The revelatory artists in this exhibition, including Giovanni Podesta, Jan Sadeler I, Paul Gavarni, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Käthe Kollwitz, Man Ray, Reginald Marsh, Barbara Morgan, Garry Winogrand, Honoré Sharrer, Red Grooms, Ed Roseberry, and Dove Bradshaw, explore these themes, highlighting dance’s ability to turn the human body into a work of art.

The title of the exhibition comes from the last line of the poem “Among School Children” by William Butler Yeats: “O body swayed to music, O brightening glance / How can we know the dancer from the dance?” The Dancer and the Dance tries to capture that conundrum.

www.virginia.edu/artmuseum

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