New & Upcoming

We've got a couple cool things going on this week at the UIMA.

First, we decided to make good use of the fancy video screen leftover we put up for Winona Ryder in the Carver Gallery during VOOM by showing off some of the fun videos we have in our permanent collection. In what we're unofficially calling our Summer Video Series, we're featuring some early video classics from American artist William Wegman (we had an exhibition of his Weimaraner portraits dressed in couture a few years back) and Swiss artists Peter Fischli and David Weiss, as well as some later works by UI emeritus faculty member Hans Breder and Roman Singer, another Swiss artist. Here's the lineup for the series:

-- May 21-June 22: selected 1970s shorts by William Wegman (See still at right.)
-- June 25-July 27: Peter Fischli and David Weiss's The Way Things Go
-- July 30-Sept. 7: UI emeritus faculty Hans Breder's Fontana Song for Scrim
-- Sept. 10-Oct. 5: 19 short films by Swiss artist Roman Singer

You really don't want to miss these videos. Most haven't been shown for quite a while, in large part because we rarely have the space in the galleries or our exhibition schedule. And most of them are hilarious. Wegman's videos use props, his own body, and his dogs as comic material -- in one short, Wegman spits out milk in a trail and his Weimaraner, Man Ray, laps it up, while another Wegman makes his belly "sing"; Fischli and Weiss use explosions, found materials, and other substances to create a domino-effect installation that keeps you wondering what will happen next; Breder's video is a bit more serious, but stunningly beautiful; and we wrap things up with Singer's "event sculptures," which present funny twists on traditional science.

For more information on the exhibition, check our website or read the full press release. And keep checking back here for more detailed previews/reviews of each video as the series progresses.
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We're also opening an exhibition of African Ceramics this week on Saturday, May 31. The show will be going up in the Ceramics II gallery, a revamped space connected to the current Ceramics Gallery on the southeast corner of the building. (The space had been closed for about two years; previously, it housed other African works from the collection.) The show is culled largely from a promised gift of nearly 100 African works from an anonymous collector. If you like African art, you know the museum has an outstanding collection, much of which came to us from Maxwell and Elizabeth Stanley of Muscatine, IA. This gift helps to expand the current collection, adding a broad sampling of African Ceramics from across the continent, creating wonderful research opportunities. The crew has been doing a lot of work getting the space prepped for the opening -- installing shelves, tiling, etc. -- and the show is going to look beautiful.

Check our website for more information and the press release on African Ceramics; we'll post a review here on the blog after the show opens.

Power of Line and MFA 2008 opening

On Friday, we held an opening for two shows: The Power of Line: European and American Etching Revival Prints from the Lee Collection and MFA 2008. We had around 250 people attend, with food catered by Chef Mickey's Catering. I snapped a few photos for those of you who missed it -- but they're nothing like seeing the show in person, so come on out! The MFA show closes June 8, and Power of Line is up through September 28.Food (above) and Power of Line (below).We love intermedia art. This guy stood outside the UIMA entrance in a mixed media construction distributing modified copies of The Iowa Source. To wrap up the afternoon, Dorothy Johnson, director of the UI School of Art and Art History, gave some words of advice to the MFA grads, and each area head spoke about his or her students. Congratulations, graduates!

UIMA Director Collinson resigns; White named interim

As the seasons change, so does the Museum of Art. This spring we say goodbye to Howard Creel Collinson, director of the UIMA since February 2000, who announced his resignation effective May 5 -- and we welcome Pamela White (right), director of the UI Pentacrest Museums (the Natural History Museum and the Old Capitol Museum) who will serve as interim UIMA director. A national search for a new UIMA director will be launched at a later date.

Read the full press release online.

Know the Score LIVE! --- with Tom Brokaw!

Courtesy of KSUI, we've got some photos from last week's Know the Score LIVE!, which featured Tom Brokaw. The event was really great -- thanks to everyone who made it happen and everyone who came to listen! Check out the KSUI flickr page to see the rest of the photos from the evening.
We had a big crowd -- nearly all the chairs were filled!
The first segment featured (from left to right) host Joan Kjaer interviewing Arthur Canter, UI professor emeritus, Christopher Merrill, director of the UI International Writing Program, and Jason Weinberger, director of the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony. The three guests shared personal stories and literary selections related to World War II and the Holocaust for this program, which was presented in recognition of Holocaust Remembrance Day.Tom Brokaw, the former NBC Nightly News anchor and UI Alumni Service Award winner, arrives!
Browkaw discussed his latest book, Boom, and reflected on people he met and stories he heard when researching his bestseller The Greatest Generation. Browkaw also shared some personal stories about his own family, and briefly discussed his time attending the UI as an undergraduate in 1958-59, during which he "smoked a lot of pot." :)
One of the audience members was a woman whose family Brokaw once stayed with in Iowa.The program concluded with a performance of selections from the Quartet of the End of Time by Weinberger and a group of principal-chair players from the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony. This work was written by French composer Olivier Messiaen in a German prison camp during World War II.