amamblog:

Here’s the lowdown on the hours and programs at the AMAM for this coming weekend:

AMAM Commencement Weekend Hours:
Saturday, May 25 10:00 am - 7:00 pm
Sunday, May 26 10:00 am - 5:00 pm

Docent-led tours of the museum will be offered on Saturday (11am and 3pm) and Sunday (2pm). 

Additionally, the Weltzheimer/Johnson House will be open from 10am until 5pm on Saturday and 12pm to 5pm on Sunday. 

We hope to see you around the museum and around campus at one of the many great events taking place prior to Monday’s Commencement ceremonies!

amamblog:

Although books of hours were the most common devotional books of the fifteenth century, there were also more varied collections of prayer. This leaf comes from one such prayer book. It shows the hand of the resurrected Christ, whose palm bears the stigmata associated with his crucifixion. Set against a yellow background meant to imitate gold leaf, this inexpensive image was used by readers who looked at the image while contemplating Christ’s death and subsequent resurrection. The text encircling the image translates as, “Whatever has been, or will be, appointed through the right hand of God the omnipotent father shall be blessed.”

This image is one of only two printed works in the exhibition Private Prayer, Public Performance. A woodcut, it was made around 1450, roughly contemporary with Gutenberg’s invention of printing with movable type, which would spell the end of manuscript illumination. This work illustrates that transition perfectly: although the image is printed, the prayer on the other side of the page is handwritten.

This work will be on view in the 2nd floor Ripin Print Gallery through July 31 in the exhibition Private Prayer, Public Performance: Religious Books of the Later Middle Ages and Renaissance.

Image:
German
Hand of God, Leaf from a Prayerbook, ca. 1450
Hand-colored woodcut
Friends of Art Fund, 1956.2

amamblog:

The Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College will offer FREE admission to the Weltzheimer/Johnson House on Sunday, May 19 (from 12pm to 5pm), as part of the Association of Art Museum Directors’ (AAMD) Art Museum Day, coinciding with International Museum Day and Weekend on Saturday, May 18, 2013. Last year, more than 120 other AAMD member museums across North America participated in Art Museum Day.

For this special weekend, the AMAM has also teamed up with the Oberlin Public Library to present a related talk. Cheryl Kuonen, director of the Wickliffe Public Library, will be presenting a talk on Frank Lloyd Wright’s art and architecture at the Oberlin Public Library Sunday at 1pm. This talk promises to enrich the experience of visiting one of the few Wright structures open to the public in Ohio.

“Art museums bring communities together and engage people of every background in the shared exploration of human expression across time and cultures,” said Chris Anagnos, Executive Director of the Association of Art Museum Directors. “AAMD is so pleased that the Allen Memorial Art Museum is joining us in celebrating Art Museum Day and is encouraging everyone in Oberlin and northeast Ohio to participate and share their experiences in a public forum.”

Art Museum Day emphasizes the essential role that art museums play in their communities, highlights the value of the visual arts in society, and provides new opportunities for audiences to participate in the wide-ranging programs offered by AAMD member museums. These member institutions—located across the United States, Canada, and Mexico—include regional museums as well as large international museums. International Museum Day is organized annually around the world by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). AAMD’s Art Museum Day is an opportunity to focus attention on the role of art museums in North America, as part of ICOM’s global celebration.

A comprehensive list of participating AAMD member art museums can be found on the AAMD website here. Note that while AAMD’s Art Museum Day and ICOM’s International Museum Day are formally held each year on May 18, some institutions shift their celebrations to adjacent dates.

For more information on the lecture or visiting the Weltzheimer/Johnson House, located at 534 Morgan Street in Oberlin, please contact the AMAM Education Department at (440) 775-8671, or email jtrimmer [at ] oberlin.edu.

amamblog:

Our final First Thursday of the semester is this week! Join us as we welcome Audrey Flack to the museum. A pioneer of Photorealism and a nationally recognized painter and sculptor, Flack will give a lecture titled: Women the Passion and the Sorrow in conjunction with the exhibition, “Religion, Ritual and Performance in Modern and Contemporary Art.” This talk is sponsored by the AMAM and the Art Department Ellen Johnson Fund.

Originally scheduled to give a talk in November, and delayed by Hurricane Sandy, we are thrilled to welcome her to campus. The talk will begin at 5:30pm, and galleries remain open until 8pm. Hope to see you there!

amamblog:

As part of a recent Kress Foundation Digital Resources planning grant, the AMAM and the Oberlin College Library teamed up to provide high-quality scans of all available Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletins. The Bulletin is a series of scholarly journals published by the Museum since 1944 which contain articles related to exhibitions and works in the collection. A valuable resource for faculty, students, staff, and scholars around the world, these Bulletins provide a wealth of information on collection works, often dating back to when a piece was first acquired by the AMAM. 

To browse the complete selection of scans, click here to visit the Oberlin College Digital Resource Commons page.

amamblog:

This Thursday and Friday, April 25 and 26, we will be hosting a very special symposium on Renaissance art in conjunction with our year-long exhibition “Religion, Ritual and Performance in the Renaissance” which presents important Renaissance paintings, sculpture, and decorative arts from the AMAM and the Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) collections. The symposium - free and open to the public - will be held in the museum’s King Sculpture Court, and will last from 11am to 6:30pm on April 25, and from 9am to 5pm on April 26.

Presenters include Oberlin College faculty members from the Art, English, History and Musicology departments, three Oberlin College students who were selected via a competitive process, faculty from Case Western Reserve University, Washington & Lee University, Miami University of Ohio, and Ohio State University, along with staff from the AMAM, the YUAG, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Intermuseum Conservation Association.

These two days promise to be exciting ones, and the public is warmly urged to attend. Presentations will range widely on topics related to medieval, Renaissance and baroque art, literature, history and music, as well as pilgrimage and religious practice.

A complete schedule of speakers and events can be found on the symposium’s page here. 

If you are in town, we hope you can make it out to some of the talks!

Corin Hewitt (OC ‘93) Talks About Giorgio de Chirico

Friday, April 12th at 3:00pm
Allen Memorial Art Museum
This event is sponsored by the Exhibition Initiative

Picture:
La Solitudine
ca. 1915
Giorgio de Chirico
Italian, born in Greece, 1888-1978
Oil on canvas
1988.23

amamblog:

Come out this weekend for a very special day of events and activities at the AMAM! In conjunction. On Saturday, April 6, from 12pm until 4pm, the museum will be offering a free Community Day. This event will feature Cleveland-based artist Hector Castellanos working on a day-long project creating a Guatamalan sawdust carpet that will measure 4 feet wide by 24 feet long (see example images above).

Traditionally, sawdust carpets are made prior to the Catholic Holy Week, and are created out of multi-colored sawdust in intricate patterns and designs. The sawdust carpet will remain on view at the museum through Sunday, April 14. 

Art-making activities offered will include a colored sand art project, a collaborative pastel mural recreating a work from the AMAM collection, a book-binding activity, as well as storytelling. This event is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Community Day is a free event, and is open to all members of the public.

amamblog:

As part of the “Muse in the Museum” First Thursday event this week, we’ll be featuring poems submitted for our call for entries. Today, we feature a work by Nancy Boutilier, Visiting Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Oberlin College:

Making A  Mountain Out of a Molehill 

It’s all about foregrounding, really.

36 views and you can make

the mountain 36 sizes:

            smaller than a bread box,

            the size of a fishing hut,

            or dwarfed by a set of ornamental curls,

                        the sea full of decorative waves

                                                fixed in their turbulent pose.

 
The mountain never changes,

even as it is made a footnote to the footbridge of Fukagawa,

or proportioned to the size of the baskets

balancing on the sandaled man’s shoulders,

or almost lost amid the haystack of Meguro.

At the water wheel, the beach, the island, the lake—

take the time to see the mountain

everywhere

and altered endlessly

backdrop here, obscured there, only a shadow on the trees

or a glimpse reflected in the river’s flow.

The mountain never changes,

only the looking.

So like a 36-winged blackbird

shutter-speed slowed to see motion frozen

in splintered slices or descending the staircase,

the mountain is as untrustworthy

as a broken clock

and it’s quitting

time somewhere

the loneliness

burning a hole

the size of a molehill

in some lover’s heart—

hole enough to hollow

the four moist chambers

and even a mountain

can’t stop the beating

of the blackbird

wings or the woman

next door who says no

of course you didn’t hear that.

we were watching

a movie. you must have heard

someone screaming

in the movie. we had it up

loud. sorry to bother you.

i’m so sorry. we’ll turn it down

tonight.—she says.

And I don’t need 36 views

of her bruises to know

there’s a mountain

of pain.

Image:
Katsushika Hokusai (Japanese, 1760–1849)
Fuji from beneath Mannen Bridge in the Fukagawa District of Edo, from the series Thirty-six Views of Mt. Fuji, early 1830s
Color woodblock print
Mary A. Ainsworth Bequest, AMAM 1950.725

 

Happy Spring Break, Oberlin!

amamblog:

Our Spring 2013 newsletter is now available online as a PDF - full of listings on exhibitions, public programs, news and notes, and collection connections!

**We’d also like to take this chance to wish a fond farewell to our Media, Membership, and Publications Coordinator Melissa Duffes. Melissa has been with the AMAM since 2008, and was responsible for many great publications, including all the newsletters and our recent collection catalog. She will be joining Marquand Books, Inc. in Seattle. We wish Melissa all the best in her new role!