Art can be selfish. I definitely have times when I’m writing “just for me” because performing your art without an audience can be extremely therapeutic. I think that’s why so many people are silent in galleries—they don’t want to disturb anyone so everyone can have their own experience; effectively making each piece you pass “just for you.”

I don’t think Julianne Swartz had me in mind when she constructed Terrain, but maybe I was more in the process than one would think. Terrain is a contemporary work that was originally in the Efroymson Family Entrance Pavilion but has been re-strategized to spider web the Caroline Marmon Fesler Gallery in the Contemporary Art Collection. It has a network of speakers that hang over head from a rainbow of wire.

The speakers play the voices of 37 different volunteers whispering. They start and end on their own accord and echo thorough out the space. As you move through the room and pick-up on varying voices it’s like you’re the conductor of 37 hushed ghosts. Basically, it’s really creepy. Logging time in the gallery, I watched quite a few people enter, get freaked out and leave. However, those who stay just long enough to read the label are rewarded.

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Filed under: Art, Contemporary, The Collection

The royal wedding between Britain’s Prince William and Kate Middleton has been the talk of the town for months. Two hundred and fifty years ago, another royal wedding – that of King George III (1738–1820) and Princess Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (1744–1818) – was on every Londoner’s lips. As Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (1694–1773), said of the marriage – and impending coronation – of the royal pair, “The town of London and the city of Westminster are gone quite mad with the wedding and the approaching coronation. People think and talk of nothing else.”

Shortly after the marriage and coronation took place in September 1761, Scottish artist Allan Ramsay (1713–1784) was commissioned to paint full-length portraits of the king and queen in their coronation robes. The demand for replicas of these portraits was so voracious that Ramsay and his assistants spent much of his remaining life producing dozens of copies, not only for the royal residences, but also for public buildings and private houses in Britain and abroad. To meet the demand, according to Ramsay scholar Alastair Smart, the artist ran his studio like a “veritable picture factory.” A visitor recounted seeing Ramsay’s “showroom crowded with portraits of His Majesty in every stage of their operation.” The result was the mass production and global distribution of copies of the coronation portraits.

The IMA is fortunate to possess fine replicas of the coronation portraits that were once owned by a member of the House of Windsor: both were formerly in the collection of Prince George, Duke of Kent (1902–1942), who was the fourth son of King George V (1865–1936) and brother of King George VI (1895–1952).

Allan Ramsay, "King George III" and "Queen Charlotte," probably 1762–1766, oil on canvas, James E. Roberts Fund.

The paintings were installed this week in the Clowes Pavilion, just in time for today’s royal wedding. Their placement in the Clowes Pavilion heralds a reinstallation of British paintings in the pavilion’s balcony gallery that will take place next month.

Filed under: Art, Installation

“The pieces are dense,” Carol Cody, the IMA’s Lighting Designer, and I look down at her lighting plan for Hard Truths. “Visually, physically, conceptually—they’re dense.”

And it’s true. All of Dial’s paintings are 3-D so they present lighting challenges your average still life wouldn’t; but this exhibition makes no claims of being average and Carol has been doing lighting for 13 years. In fact, nearly every single light throughout the IMA galleries has been personally screwed-in by Carol Cody—that’s a lot of bulbs.

Dial’s show alone has around 500 fixtures. These lamps are chosen and adjusted after the pieces have been installed, giving it a final touch. Every light has a filter and Carol layers screens over lamps to dim them. She is part of the process from the beginning. The Lighting Designer has to collaborate with everyone else on the exhibition to “tell the story” as best as possible.

Carol took expert care in washing warm light into the room filled with work depicting the Southern Past. Bright light further excites Dial’s tributes to African American Yard Art and the creative spirit. Dimmer lamps kept the mood of the drawings room more restful. “I angled the light at the floor, with the light wood you get a lot of bounce and that way it doesn’t affect the art as much.”

Light exposure can degrade a piece of art, that’s why it’s regulated so closely and why you can’t take flash photography in a museum. Part of Carol’s job is understanding the conservation issues surrounding a work. The most difficult things to light are textiles and paper, because they’re more delicate and can fade. The easiest things to light are objects, especially stone or metal, which are hardier.

The role of lighting, as I understand, is to best display the message that is already being communicated. It takes care, precision and an aerial lift. Carol designs the lighting, as well as maintains it. With 10,000 square feet in the special exhibitions space alone, it’s a big job. But she keeps us out of the dark one bulb at a time.

Filed under: Exhibitions, IMA Staff, Installation, Thornton Dial

Sun Boxes is a solar-powered sound installation.  It’s comprised of twenty speakers operating independently, each powered by the sun via solar panels. Inside each Sun Box is a PC board that has a recorded guitar note loaded and programmed to play continuously in a loop.  These guitar notes collectively make a Bb chord.  The loops are different in length and therefore continually overlap, evolving the piece slowly over time.

The work creates space; it’s an environment for one to enter and exit.   The footprint this environment occupies is similar to that of a city.  A metropolis. It’s a burst of technology in the middle of nature.  However, unlike most cities I have been to, it does not just take over the space. Rather, Sun Boxes interfaces with the environment and collaborates with nature.  Participants are encouraged to walk amongst the speakers and surround themselves with the piece.  Certain speakers will be closer and – as a result – louder, so the piece will sound  different to different people in different positions.  Allowing the audience to move around the piece will create a unique experience for everyone.  Sun Boxes is not just one composition, but many.

There are no batteries involved, so Sun Boxes is reliant on the sun.  When the sun sets the music stops and doesn’t start until the sun rises.  The piece changes as the length of the day changes.  Since the amount of sunlight varies from day to day, so does the composition.  We are all reliant on the sun.  It is refreshing to be reminded of this.  Karlheinze Stockhausen once said, “Using short-wave radios in pieces was like improvising with the world.”  Similarly, Sun Boxes collaborates with the planet and it’s relation to the sun.

The IMA is celebrating the Spring Equinox with a three-day installation of Sun Boxes starting Friday, March 18.

Filed under: Art, Art and Nature Park

Two new additions to the IMA’s renowned Pont-Aven School Collection are now on view in the Jane H. Fortune Gallery. The Corner Cabinet with Breton Scenes by Emile Bernard is a rare example of carved and painted wood furniture from the group of international artists that worked in the village of Pont Aven in Brittany in the 1880s and 1890s. The cabinet was purchased from the collection of Samuel Josefowitz, the distinguished collector who is generously giving the museum the other new work of art on view in the gallery, a preparatory drawing for the cabinet that allows us to see Bernard’s design process at work.

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Filed under: Art