Undergraduate activities: Daniel Bontempi and Alex Feim at the SUNY Research Undergraduate Conference

Art History majors Daniel Bontempi and Alex Feim will both present papers at the inaugural SUNY Undergraduate Research Conference (SURC) at SUNY Brockport on Friday, April 10, 2015. SURC will bring together undergraduate researchers and visual and performing artists as well as their faculty mentors throughout the SUNY system for a full day of activities, including student presentations and a luncheon with a keynote lecture. Dan will present a paper titled “Duane Hanson: Art and Object,” while Alex will present “Entangled Durations: Gordon Matta-Clark’s Bingo.”

Barbara Morgan exhibition featured in “Inside”

Barbara Morgan’s “Martha Graham – Letter to the World (Kick)” is among the photographs on display in “The Inner Landscape of Dance: Photographs by Barbara Morgan 1935–1944.” The exhibit runs through June 20 at the University Art Museum.

“Inside Binghamton” is currently featuring a story on “The Inner Landscape of Dance: Photographs by Barbara Morgan 1935-1944,” currently on view at the University Art Museum. The show opened last Friday with a gallery talk by Distinguished Professor of Art History and exhibition co-organizer John Tagg. A catalogue, designed by Assistant Professor of Art Blazo Kovacevic and featuring an introduction by Diane Butler, Director of the Binghamton University Art Museum, and an essay by John Tagg, as well as images of all 30 photographs displayed in the exhibition, is available for purchase for $15.00 in the museum shop.

Today at Crossing the Boundaries XXIII: Cut and Paste

Tonight at Crossing the Boundaries XXIII: Cut and Paste

Today at Crossing the Boundaries XXIII: Cut and Paste

Faculty Activities: Tom McDonough at Kunsthalle Wien

From April 9 to April 11, Associate Professor Tom McDonough will take part in a conference titled “Curatorial Ethics” at  Kunsthalle Wien.

The verb ‘curate’ derives from the Latin curare and means to attend to something and thus also to take responsibility – for an exhibition, for the participating artists, for the works etc. In the business world the code of ethics, which defines what is legitimate and what is not, is becoming ever more important. In the curatorial field too, important parameters have been shifting in recent years. We have seen subtle but lasting changes in the relationship between public and private collections, together with the handling of the latter, in the relationship between the institutional art establishment and the art market, and finally in the relationship between curators and artists.
So the time is ripe to talk about a curatorial code of ethics: where are the boundaries, what are the grey areas? The point of departure for this three-day conference, in which international representatives of various sectors of the art world will present their viewpoints, is not so much to discuss deficiencies and problems, but instead to fundamentally acknowledge that these exist.

Material and Visual Worlds speaker series: Michael Taussig, Columbia University

Next VizCult: Ida Dominijanni, CANCELLED

Due to unforeseen circumstances, there will be no VizCult this week. Our next talk will be on April 15, as scheduled.

Graduate activities: Rotem Rozental at the Center for Jewish History

Congratulations to doctoral student Rotem Rozental, who has been awarded a Graduate Research Fellowship at the Center for Jewish History for 2015-2016 for her dissertation, “Photographic Archives, Nationalism and the Foundation of the Jewish State: 1903-1948.”

The Center for Jewish History is a cultural institution, independent research facility and destination for the exploration of Jewish history and heritage.  For more information, see http://www.cjh.org/

Monday: Candidate for Assistant Professor of Photography in the Department of Art and Design

Daniel Bauer, Visiting Assistant Professor of Photography at SUNY Purchase, candidate for Assistant Professor of Photography in the Department of Art and Design, will provide a public presentation from 1:30 – 2:45 p.m. Monday, March 23, in Fine Arts Building, room 347.

A 2006 Columbia University M.F.A. graduate, Daniel Bauer exhibits and publishes internationally, including several solo exhibitions at Andrea Meislin Gallery in New York, Museum of Art, Ein Harod in Israel, Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, Israel, and numerous group exhibitions including Israel Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2002,  ISM at Yale University, Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv, Israel, The Henry Moore Institute, Leeds, Great Britain, and Malmo Konsthall, Sweden, among others.

Opening reception next Tuesday at University Art Museum

Please join us on Tuesday, March 24, 4:00-5:00, for a reception opening student-curated exhibitions at the Binghamton University Art Museum!

The Civil War: Images of Ruin was curated by graduate students from the Departments of History and Art History. This exhibition focuses on the photography of Alexander Gardner and documents the tragic history of America’s greatest domestic conflict. The war produced ruin on an unprecedented scale in human lives, environmental damage, and the destruction of property. The images on display were originally intended for public consumption and private ownership, and as such, suggest how 19th-century Americans both endured and fetishized the violence of the war. The Tioga County Historical Society kindly lent the photographs for this exhibition.

Two thematic mini-exhibitions also open. The Multi-Modernist Tilly Losch: Dancer, Actress & Artist, curated by Kara Lynn Nandin ’15, features photographs on loan from Special Collections of the University Libraries of the talented early 20th-century performer. The Shepherd of the Beyond: Death Personified in Art was curated by Annie McHugh ’15 and explores imagery of art and death produced over five centuries. This exhibition was made possible by the generous gifts and loans of William Voelkle ’61.

The continuing exhibition, A World of Goods: Global Commodities in the East and West, was curated by students enrolled in Art in the Age of Discoveries, 1500-1800, taught by Professor Nancy Um.

All exhibitions are in the Nancy J. Powell Lower Galleries (FA-179) and will be on view Tuesday, March 24 through Saturday, June 20, 2015.

Admission to the museum is free. For directions and museum hours visit artmuseum.binghamton.edu.

Faculty Activities: Tom McDonough at the Whitechapel Gallery

On Friday, March 13, Associate Professor Tom McDonough took part in a symposium titled “Abstract Art and Society” at the Whitechapel Gallery in conjunction with the current exhibition Adventures of the Black Square.

An in-depth exploration of abstract art over the last 100 years to today. The discussion unpacks the four themes of the exhibition Adventures of the Black Square – Utopia, Architectonics, Communication, and the Everyday – to see how abstract art has been used to envisage change in societies globally. Charting a chronological path through abstraction, two days of presentations and conversations explore the concept’s beginnings in the work of Kazimir Malevich, its global dissemination through the technologies of photography and graphic design, its political implications and its unravelling across multiple geographies.