The James A. Michener Art Museum presents Art Speaks: Contemporary Art Collections open through January 2, 2011 in the Fred Beans Gallery.
In fact, art does speak at the James A. Michener Art Museum. In the exhibition Art Speaks, contemporary artists transform the ordinary to the extraordinary and spark interactivity, reaching out to community members from the youngest to the most senior, to teens in transition and those who may be without a home.
Vincent Ceglia (b. 1923), Early Light, 1984, acrylic, H. 21 x W. 29, Bucks County Intermediate Unit #22.
Art Speaks: Contemporary Connections with the Bucks County Intermediate Unit Collection will feature the work of more than 50 student artists from preschool through high school in response to the contemporary artwork of the Bucks County Intermediate Unit #22 Collection and will include a special installation, “SNAG,” conceived and created by Philadelphia-area artist Astrid Bowlby. Beginning December 14, Ordinary to Extraordinary: An “Art Speaks” Installation curated by artist Patricia Goodrich, will turn the Children’s Gallery into a multimedia installation featuring selected works by members of the community.
Lead sponsor: The Pamela Minford Foundation; Co-Sponsor: Memory of Robert V. Nesi from his family; Additional Support: Charter Management Corporation and Jim & Mary Ellen McMaster.
First, some background: In the 1940s, a forward-thinking superintendent, Dr. Charles H. Boehm, knew that the best way to teach young people about art was to expose them to the real thing. Together with Bucks County painter and Allentown Art Museum co-founder Walter Baum, who created other school collections in Lehigh, Montgomery County and Philadelphia, Dr. Boehm created the Bucks County Traveling Art Gallery, now known as the Bucks County Intermediate Unit (BCIU) #22 Collection. With money raised through bake sales, the collection of historic Pennsylvania Impressionist School paintings was exhibited in area schools for decades.
In 1999, through State Legislative Initiative funding, the collection was removed from the schools and conserved and repaired at the Michener Art Museum. In an effort to bring back its original mission, in 2001, the Michener and the Bucks County Intermediate Unit #22 entered into a partnership to collaborate on the outreach program Art on the Move. This program consists of an exhibition of artwork at the school, along with education activities that includes curriculum materials written by Bucks County teachers, Art on the Move and Michener Education staff. As a result of its success, in 2003, the Michener received a three-year grant for $150,000 to expand Art on the Move from the Institute of Museums and Library Services (IMLS).
In 2007, the Museum was fortunate to receive a second grant from IMLS, this time for $149,998, to expand the current Art on the Move Program to Art Speaks/Bucks County, using the recently acquired contemporary artwork of the BCIU collection with area schools. Artwork by printmaker Selma Bortner, photographers Emmet Gowin and David Graham, and painters Vincent Ceglia and Paul Keene were added to the outreach program and will be part of the Art Speaks exhibition. Artists in residence were brought into16 schools as part of this phase to help create connections with contemporary artists and the contemporary artwork hanging in the school. The grant also funded art workshops focused on contemporary art with 12 Bucks County community centers to reach a wider audience.
There are three components to Art Speaks:
Art Speaks: Contemporary Connections (in the Fred Beans Gallery): An exhibition that features more than 50 student works, preschool through high school, created in response to the contemporary artwork of the Bucks County Intermediate Unit #22 Collection. A video will feature the artists-in-residence who guided students in creating their work, and will show the artists working with the students in the classroom. A Powerpoint Presentation will also show the work of all the student artworks that were submitted for the exhibition during the two-year program. Visitors to the Museum will have the chance to respond about how art has spoken to them in an interactive area of the exhibition including a comment kiosk using the new website funded by IMLS, Learn with the Michener.
SNAG: Special “Art Speaks” Installation (in the Putman-Smith Gallery): To encourage dialogue about styles of contemporary art, Astrid Bowlby was commissioned to create an installation at the Museum that would have a “conversation” with some of the Michener’s best-known landscape paintings. The work of Ms. Bowlby, who grew up in Maine, evolved from traditional landscapes to meditations on the landscape, or what she calls “situations”: arrangements, on crude homemade tables, of pine cones, bottles and sticks in overgrown fields and wooded areas.
For Ordinary to Extraordinary (in the Children’s Gallery, December 14, 2010-January 23, 2011), a multimedia installation curated by artist and Poet Laureate Patricia Goodrich, will feature artwork from selected Bucks County residents from 12 community centers (including but not limited to: Milford Square, Doylestown and Penndell Homeless shelters, Upper Bucks and Morrisville senior centers, the Bucks County Youth Center, the Teen Center through Family Services and the Rainbow Room at Planned Parenthood) who were led in workshops to create their own contemporary art. Ordinary chairs have been used to represent landscape, figure, surreal and abstract works. Visitors will have the opportunity to “Build Peace” with blocks designed by more than 120 participating artists. The inspiration for the project is rooted in such local works of art as Edward Hicks’s “The Peaceable Kingdom” and George Nakashima’s Peace Tables.
Special program presentation: Celebrating Art Speaks: Artists and the School Community, Sunday, October 24, 3-5 pm, Ann and Herman Silverman Pavilion and galleries; free (Act 48 credits available); advance registration required by calling 215-340-9800. Gallery Talk, Tuesday, December 14, 6 pm, free. Meet installation guest curator Patricia Goodrich.
The Art Speaks/Bucks County exhibition and programs were funded by a Museums for America grant through the Institute of Museums and Library Services. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this release do not necessarily represent those of the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The James A. Michener Art Museum is located at 138 South Pine St., Doylestown, Pa. Museum hours: Tuesday through Friday, 10 am to 4:30 pm;
Saturday 10 am to 5 pm; Sunday noon to 5 pm. Admission: Members and children under 6, free; adults $10; seniors $9; college student with valid ID $7.50; ages 6-18 $5. For more information, visit www.michenerartmuseum.org or call 215-340-9800.
Annual support for the Michener Art Museum is provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Bucks County Commissioners and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
Calendar listing: Art Speaks —Contemporary Connections with the Bucks County Intermediate Unit Collection, October 23, 2010-January 2, 2011; Special “Art Speaks” Installation SNAG conceived and created by Astrid Bowlby, October 23-January 2, 2011; Ordinary to Extraordinary—An “Art Speaks” Installation, December 14, 2010-January 23, 2011.The James A. Michener Art Museum is located at 138 South Pine St., Doylestown, Pa. Museum hours: Tuesday through Friday, 10 am to 4:30 pm; Saturday 10 am to 5 pm; Sunday noon to 5 pm. Admission: Members and children under 6, free; adults $10; seniors $9; college student with valid ID $7.50; ages 6-18 $5. For more information, visit www.michenerartmuseum.org or call 215-340-9800.