Latest OU Museum
Oglethorpe presents “Chagall – The Early Etchings of the 1920s”
Posted by: | October 03, 2011 | Comments
The Oglethorpe University Museum of Art is now featuring an exhibition of sixty-five rarely viewed etchings and aquatints by Russian-born painter and printmaker Marc Chagall. The exhibition also features five colored lithographs from the private collection of Drs. Isaac and Yolanta Melamed. The show will run through December 11, 2011.
Oglethorpe students are invited to a special students-only opening reception at the Museum on Tuesday, October 4, from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Hear about the artwork and enjoy some refreshments as well!
The exhibit focuses on the early etchings of the 1920s when Chagall and his young bride Bella (Berta) Rosenfeld moved to Paris following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Included in the exhibit are the famous etchings based on Dead Souls and the La Fontaine Fables. Chagall was prolific in his artistic endeavors and he became a master in many pursuits that included painting, tapestry design, stained glass, mosaics and the graphic arts. His interest in etching began when he was thirty-five years old while still living in Berlin before moving to Paris. He was passionate about learning all the technical aspects of using the burin and drypoint in this newly discovered art form.
During the exhibit’s run, OUMA will also offer lectures and the Skylight Gallery Concert Series. Visit the OUMA website for more information.
OUMA is open Tuesday-Sunday, 12 noon – 5 p.m., with docent tours offered at 2 p.m. on Sundays. General admission is $5.00, but if you have a Petrel Pass it’s free! OU students, you can earn a Petrel Point by attending the student reception or by checking out the exhibit. Don’t miss it!
Pictured: Lloyd Nick, director of the OU Museum of Art.
Explore Ancient Greece at Oglethorpe
Posted by: | September 09, 2011 | CommentsAre you ready for a virtual trip to ancient Greece? Next week Oglethorpe University will present two art history lectures that will sweep you away to these ancient worlds.
“Look and listen: Poet, artist and patron in ancient Greece”
Oglethorpe will welcome Dr. Jasper Gaunt, the curator of Greek and Roman art at Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum, who will lecture about Greek artifacts as they relate to the study of the texts of Herodotus, Homer and Thucydides. The lecture will take place on Monday, September 12 at 6:30 p.m. in Lupton Auditorium, and a reception will follow in the Great Hall of Hearst.
“The Minoan Mystery”
The next evening, Dr. Jeffrey Collins, assistant professor of art history at Oglethorpe, will lecture about Minoan archaeology. The Minoan culture, pre-dating the ancient Greeks, was one of the most intriguing and mysterious cultures in the ancient world.
“Archaeology informs us, mythology inspires us,” said Dr. Collins. “Both archaeology and mythology help reveal a mysterious people who built palaces, painted extraordinary frescoes, and traded as seafarers in the ancient world. Who were they?” He will help answer this question and lead the audience on a visual journey through the history and the mystery. Dr. Collins will present the most recent findings and ideas about the Minoan culture on Tuesday, September 13 at 7:30 p.m. in the OU Museum of Art.
Both lectures are free and open to the public.
Dr. Collins also is the director of the Study Abroad program at Oglethorpe University (OUSA). For more information about OUSA and the study abroad opportunities for OU students to visit this ancient art up close and personally, contact Jessica Sundstrom.
Photos: Dr. Jasper Gaunt; The Bull-Leaping Fresco from the Great Palace at Knossos, Crete.
OU Museum Scholarship Winner Takes Photography to the National Level
Posted by: | June 23, 2011 | Comments
High schooler Sara Endrias is the picture of artistic accomplishment. After receiving a scholarship from the OU Museum of Art to attend one of its summer photography programs, Sara went on to earn accolades for her work at both the local and regional Boys & Girls Clubs of America Imagemakers Photography Competition. And now, she’s progressing to the national competition.
While at Oglethorpe’s program, Sara learned alternative process photography, and spent the summer exploring different types of imaging, including photograms, the kind of photograph she entered in the contest. Her creation, titled “Flaming Pitcher of Destiny,” was announced as the Southeast Regional winner in the 16-18-year-old Alternative Process category.
Sara is a 4-year member of the Brookhaven Boys & Girls Club, one of Oglethorpe’s neighbors. Because of her excellent work, Sara will receive a certificate of merit from the president of the Boys & Girls Clubs of America. If selected as a national winner, her photograph will be displayed in the Imagemakers National Photography Contest exhibit and she’ll receive a Boys & Girls Clubs of America award.
Sara's winning entry: A photogram is made without a camera, but combines light and photosensitive material to create an image.
Do you know of another young photographer who might want to try out the OU Museum of Art’s photography class? The next one starts soon — on June 27th! Find out how to register here.
Summer is the Season for Art Education Classes at OUMA
Posted by: | May 25, 2011 | CommentsEverybody knows that the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art hosts some of the most magnificient art exhibits, but did you know that the museum holds a number of art workshops as well?
Starting in June, art enthusiasts of all ages will descend upon Weltner Library’s third floor not only take in some fine art, but also to to learn from the pros ways in which they can master their medium. Art instructors Allise Whitworth, Stephanie Routier, and Jean Woodall will share their expertise in portraiture, photography, and drawing in a series of workshops and camps for both children and adults.
For two weeks, ten young photographers will escape the world of digital, when Routier takes them back to the basics with her black and white Photography 101 camp, designed for highly motivated students, 12 years and older. For younger kids and teens, OUMA is hosting a Summer Art Camp that will focus on OUMA’s current exhibit, Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest: Modern and Contemporary Indian Art from the Collection of Shelley and Donald Rubin ’56. Students will explore and experiment with patterns, portraits, and resist techniques as they create original two-dimensional artwork.
On Friday afternoons, Whitworth invites adult learners to try their hand at traditional Indian art techniques, inspired by the Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest exhibit. In Woodall’s Moving Into Art workshop, artists integrate the technical with the creative by drawing with the assistance of image-guided movement of the Skinner Releasing Technique (SRT).
The museum also will host a Saturday Family Art Day on June 4 and Girl Scout Badge Workshops. Visit OUMA online to find out more on dates and registration for these summer art programs. Some of the classes begin as early as June 3!
Dr. Schall Gets Personal with Chronicle of Higher Education
Posted by: | May 23, 2011 | Comments
President Schall barely misses an overhead balloon filled with colored water during Oglethorpe's Holi Color Festival in March. Holi is celebrated in India to welcome spring, and the occasion is marked each year when hundreds of people playfully splatter their neighbors with colored powder and water.
In this week’s online edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Oglethorpe President Larry Schall shares his thoughts about experiencing campus life during the opening week of OU Museum of Art’s Goddess, Lion, Peasant, Priest exhibit in March.
To celebrate the exhibition’s arrival on campus, OU students organized several events—including an Indian Holi color festival on the quad (read: water balloon fight Oglethorpe-style) and a screening of the film Slumdog Millionaire. In the article the Chronicle titled “A College President Puts Down His Pencil for a Water Balloon,” President Schall writes:
“I knew most of the kids who had arrived early, and they teased me about wearing a suit and tie to the event. I had no intention whatsoever of joining their water-balloon fight and had, in fact, deliberately worn a suit for the specific purpose of avoiding any involvement…But as I watched the students get ready for their “spring bath,” the thought crossed my mind: Didn’t I have some shorts and a T-shirt in the trunk of my car?… Ten minutes later, barefoot and dressed for the gym, I was leading a charge across the lawn, armed with a half-dozen balloons of my own…for a brief moment, I was transported back 40 years to my college days. (Although, to be honest, I’m not sure I ever had that much fun in college–at least that I can remember.)” Click here for the full article.
Oglethorpe’s French Master Art Exhibition Opens in Style
Posted by: | September 30, 2010 | CommentsMore than 150 people attended the opening of Oglethorpe University Museum of Art’s opening of its exhibition, Nineteenth Century French Master Drawings and Sculpture from the Schlossberg Collection. Dr. and Mrs. Michael Schlossberg were in attendance to help open the exhibition, which ran through December 12.
Dr. and Mrs. Michael Schlossberg
In attendance were several members of Dr. Schlossberg’s family, community and museum members, and media. Among those mingling were the French Consul General Pascal Le Deunff and plenty of OU mainstays, including former Provost Dr. William Shropshire and Dr. Jay Lutz, Professor of French.
Considered to be one of the top 100 private collections in the country (Arts & Antiques), the Schlossberg Collection showcases the skill of famous French masters, including Ingres, Gaugin, Degas, Renoir, Seurat, Bourdelle, Couture, Pissaro and others, and has been exhibited around the world at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museum of Modern Art (New York, NY), Musée d’Orsay (Paris), Vincent Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam), Dansmuseet (Stockholm), and Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Hamburg), among others.
Several lectures, concerts, and special events were held in conjunction with the exhibition, including a lecture by Jennifer Wright, associate vice president and specialist in 19th century European and old master drawings for Christie’s in New York, and Naturalists Unleashed: Innovations in Biology in the 19th Century, a lecture by Oglethorpe assistant professor Karen Schmeichel, Ph.D.
OUMA is open Tuesday-Sunday from 12 noon – 5 pm. More information is available at museum.oglethorpe.edu.
OUMA Exhibition Preview: Salvador Dali
Posted by: | July 12, 2010 | CommentsFalling astronauts. An exhausted giraffe running with a fiery mane. Lifeless chipmunks settled in…the silhouette of a human face?
These visuals are just some of the thrilling madness that is Salvador Dali. They are morphing images—those that transform in theme and feeling as the eye moves across the piece. This is the kind of art that moves from graceful, to gore, to graphic all in the same piece—and leaves the viewer either fully confident that they know exactly what’s going on or completely confused, but determined to resolve the scene within their mind.
At least that was my experience during June of 2010, as I walked the red gallery of the OU Museum of Art with Assistant Art Director Betsy Ayers. She was putting the finishing touches on the highly-anticipated Dali exhibition, which opened Sunday and runs through September 11. As my attention shifted from one piece to another, falling for each new visual trick, and subconsciously aware of my losing streak in his famous mind-eye games, I couldn’t help pondering the idea that this was exactly what Dali would have wanted.
The exhibition featured a set of lithographs, or prints, that are authorized copies of Dali’s original works, donated anonymously to OUMA’s permanent collection. In each of the fourteen lithographs, the surrealist is typified by the reality that in viewing seems so very “unreal.” Betsy even told me that to achieve this experience, Dali would actually induce a paranoid-delirium state, which in his words, were to “maintain the systematization of delirious thought within the most remarkable coherence.” He wanted to make dream-like images.
Betsy Ayers and intern Jordy Pfeifer arrange a Dali lithograph at the OU Museum of Art.
One remarkable feature of the OUMA exhibit is a trilogy of lithographs that were part of a tarot card deck that Dali was commissioned to illustrate. Read More→
Pastels & Utrillo: Great Art from Savannah to Paris
Posted by: | June 08, 2010 | Comments
Kristina DeVega '11
Having a summer job has its obvious benefits, like having some extra money in your pocket for the little pleasures of life. Working at the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art gives you some chunk change and then some…
I enjoyed working at the Oglethorpe Museum because we had (and still have) some of the most interesting exhibitions, but, unfortunately, not enough people know about them. For example, while I worked there, we hosted the Southeastern Pastel Society Juried Exhibition until June 27, and Utrillo: The Magic of Monmartre through Sept. 5 of 2010.
When we were hanging the pastels, I was delighted to see artists from Atlanta, St. Simon’s Island, and Woodstock, Georgia. We have seen exhibitions from around the world, but nothing is more fun than to see artists who live right around the corner. I sometimes forget that great art isn’t always the highbrow work that appeals to the esoteric elite, but great art appeals to anyone who is willing to look.
One of my favorite pieces from the exhibit is called “The Blue Motorcycle” by J. Kay Gordon from Marshall, North Carolina. The painting is a close up of the chrome parts of a motorcycle where you can see a reflection of a pristine, all-American, baby blue motorcycle. I love the distortion the artist used in the painting. You can see the blue motorcycle through different perspectives, and it’s amazing to see the swirls and curves of a warped motorcycle. The Pastels Exhibition was a collection of different artists who use pastels distinctive to each of their styles. It was refreshing to see a medium used differently in one collection.
Featured pastel artist, Kay Ridge of Stockbridge, painting an animal portrait at the museum.
I am an admirer of art who loves to learn from artists and other art enthusiasts. The wonderful members of the Pastel Society volunteered to have an artist paint each weekday while the exhibition was up. Even someone as shy and awkward as me asked them questions about their work, and they were more than happy to talk about pastels. Ms. Betsy Cozine, who painted “Tulips in the Spring,” took me to one of her colleague’s paintings and described what she loved about his technique. I also talked to Junko Ono Rothwell from Atlanta, who painted “Sand Dunes in October”, about working with pastels.
We also had another exhibition called Utrillo: The Magic of Monmartre which showcases artwork of Maurice Utrillo, one of the last artists born in the bohemian Monmartre of Paris. He is said to be one of the last impressionists, and this collection had never before been seen in public, which made this our little gem. Although I love impressionism, I think I enjoy the backstory on Utrillo most of all. He was born to a model who worked for several Impressionists such as Degas and Renoir, but his real father is unknown. Utrillo was somewhat of a mystery child until another painter, Miguel Utrillo, claimed him as his own. 20th century debauchery is so much fun.
OUr kind of Monday…
Posted by: | March 12, 2010 | CommentsWho says Mondays are no good?
This Monday (March 15), why not make it yOUr kind of Monday?
Bernice A. King
Visit the Conant Center from 4 p.m. – 6 p.m., to meet Bernice A. King, the youngest child of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She’s also the president-elect of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
King will be interviewed by several OU students about the topic Women as Leaders and Peace Makers in a Time of War and Economic Crisis. Following the program, she’ll sign copies of her books, available for purchase at the event. Brought to us by the Oglethorpe Women’s Network (OWN) and is co-sponsored by OU’s nationally-recognized Center for Civic Engagement and the Rich Foundation Urban Leadership Program. There is no cost to attend.
Poet Linda Bierds (photo: mary levin)
You can then stroll across the parking lot to the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art (OUMA) for two more events. From 5:00-6:30 p.m., national award-winning poet Linda Bierds will read from her most recent book Flight: New and Selected Poems, followed by a reception and book signing.
Is there a better way to spend a Monday? We think not.
Matisse Exhibition at Oglethorpe Museum
Posted by: | January 29, 2010 | Comments
Featured at the Oglethorpe University Museum of Art: the exhibition Henri Matisse: A Celebration of French Poets & Poetry, a collection of 47 lithographs and16 etchings, that examines the poetic interest of one of the greatest French painters of the 20th Century.
In 1930, when Matisse returned to France from an extended vacation in Tahiti, he was invited by the famous French publisher, Albert Skira, to illustrate selected poems title poesies by the 19th Century poet Stéphane Mallarmé. It was the first of several commissions to follow involving poetry and the graphic arts of etching and later lithography.
The exhibition ran through May 9, 2010. Read More→