“Willie Cole: Old School,” new and recent works by the critically acclaimed American sculptor and printmaker, opens Thursday, January 15, with a reception, free and open to the public.

Cole’s second exhibition at Haley Gallery, “Old School” explores the meaning of words like “Love,” “Hate,” and “Dixie,” and the acronyms created by their letters, through a series of seven new “chalkboard” paintings. The show also features the largest work Cole has ever created, a painting inspired by the word “Patriot.” Examples of Cole’s chalkboard paintings are featured in the collections of the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, GA), the Studio Museum in Harlem (New York, NY), and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts (Salt Lake City, UT), among others.

In addition to this new group of paintings, the gallery will present a series of rarely seen artist studies, created over more than three decades, in which Cole develops acronyms for the larger works, as well as additional paintings and prints never exhibited in Tennessee. This exhibition is curated by Paul Barrett, who is also curating the upcoming career-survey, “Willie Cole: My Brand is History” at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts (Montgomery, AL) in 2027.

The opening reception for “Old School” (Thursday, January 15, from 5:00–9:00 PM) is free and open to the public. All work is available for purchase.

Sited in the new artist in residence studios and lounge, this installation recognizes the enduring impact of the Museum’s signature Artist-in-Residence program. Nearly all former artists in residence are represented through a combination of newly commissioned works on paper, objects from the Museum’s collection, and art on loan from friends and family.

Proposed as a founding initiative in 1968, the Artist-in-Residence program has earned the Studio Museum in Harlem recognition for its catalytic role in advancing the work of visual artists of African and Afro-Latinx descent. Envisioned by artist William T. Williams as an “intimate community of artists working and learning from each other,” the program, launched in 1969, was one of three founding initiatives, alongside the Film Unit and the Studio Program. At the time, participants in the program were asked to lead workshops and host open studios to encourage experimentation and collaboration with the people of Harlem and local artists. In the 1980s, under the directorship of Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, the Museum formally exhibited artwork made by the artists in residence in a culminating exhibition, accompanied by a short publication. At its core, the residency program offers artists an unparalleled opportunity to develop their practice from within the Studio Museum’s walls. With Harlem as a backdrop and inspiration, the program includes studio spaces for artists to work, exhibit, and engage with visitors in one of the most important historical centers for Black cultural production. As the only initiative from the Museum’s formation that remains active to this day, the Artist-in-Residence program is central to the institution’s mission and has supported over 150 artists since its inception.

Gesturing toward the future of this program and the artists who will soon occupy this space, the residency’s alumni were asked to reflect on their time at the Studio Museum when making new work for this presentation. Seen together, these artists’ memories and impressions form a visual narrative not only of the history of this program but of the Museum itself.

BravinLee programs presents: Stay Frosty

October 24-26 (Friday-Sunday)
16-20 Convent Avenue at 128th Street
Hours: TBA

Stay Frosty is part tailgate, part trunk show, part festival, and part site-specific exhibition located in an open-air parking lot in West Harlem. Each vehicle will contain a curated presentation, including an iconic Willie Cole water bottle car.

Updates at: https://www.bravinlee.com/current-exhibition

Modern and Classical Contemporary and Whimsical Sculpture: Figurative Works, Mixed Media, and Assemblage at Bill Hodges Gallery

Modern and Classical Contemporary and Whimsical Sculpture explores form across a diverse range of sculptural media, highlighting the inventive ways artists shape, manipulate, and transform materials. 
 
The exhibition features celebrated artists; including Willie Cole, Elizabeth Catlett, Melvin Edwards, and Sargent Johnson, whose works offer distinct perspectives on modern and contemporary sculpture. Together, these works invite you to consider the balance between tradition and experimentation, the intersections in abstraction and figuration, and the power of sculpture to communicate ideas and cultural narratives.

On view 10 AM - 6 PM Tuesday - Friday at 529 West 20th St, NYC

Franklin Furnace, a crucial downtown New York art space and archive currently based at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, is the subject of a retrospective gallery show anticipating its 50th anniversary in 2026. Founder Martha Wilson, an eminent feminist performance artist, described Franklin Furnace as “a hothouse for artists’ ideas, a place where ideas create light and heat.” Opened in 1976, the organization provided the downtown New York avant-garde with a repository for artist-produced books; nurtured performance art, installation art, and arts education; and championed countless emerging artists who would rise to international renown. Included in the exhibition are works by Wilson, Willie Cole, Jenny Holzer, Tehching Hsieh, Dread Scott, and more.

Located inside the The Rudin Family Gallery, BAM Strong.

Strategic Interplay: African Art and Imagery in Black and White explores connections between African art and the ancient game of chess. The two fields of strategic endeavor have intertwined, inspired, and influenced each other in ways both overt and indirect for nearly one and half millennia.

Strategic Interplay: African Art and Imagery in Black and White is organized by the Toledo Museum of Art and curated by Lanisa Kitchiner, Ph.D., Senior Manager of Interpretation and Curator of African Art at the Toledo Museum of Art; and Wendy Grossman, Ph.D., an independent art historian and curator.

This solo exhibition of work by Willie Cole, who was an Arts/Industry resident in the Kohler Co. Pottery in 2000, features newly commissioned sculptures alongside a selection of works spanning over three decades.

Cole visualizes the reality that domestic spaces are often tangled with histories of enslaved labor. He uses the visual vocabulary of the domestic sphere—shoes, tools, furniture, for example—to bring forward the grief and intimacy that linger within private spaces.

By using craft and household objects in his artworks, Cole spreads awareness of women’s and enslaved peoples’ labor that has been ignored or under recognized and is integral to the history of the United States. These reflective works are Cole’s initiative to complicate labor histories and lack of visual representations in the art canon.

Home Assembly, installed at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center highlights Cole’s refiguring of familiar and frequently discarded objects to confront and demand attention from his audience. His assemblages and prints convey intricate histories and messages, demonstrating the complexities and the commonalities shared in the cultivation of homes and the lives they shelter. Cole frequently uses the iron —burn marks, the ironing board, and the iron itself—as parts of human figures, as protective shields, as the shape of ships that transported enslaved Africans to the Americas, and to commemorate the work of women.

The chandelier sculptures on view allude to the community investment involved in constructing a home. When creating these, Cole often works with specific neighborhoods to collect discarded plastic bottles, resulting in community connections and cleaner streets.

Home Assembly honors Cole’s impact on the fields of labor and methodical craft, which are at the core of the Arts/ Industry program.

Everyday Objects Become ‘Extra’ in New Exploratorium Exhibit

The Exploratorium, the 55-year-old San Francisco institution full of frenetic energy, hands-on science and roving gangs of ecstatic children, might not seem like a place for visual art. And it’s true this museum doesn’t contain the sort of white-walled, hushed gallery spaces you find in certain cultural institutions.

But what the Exploratorium does provide in terms of a viewing environment is perhaps more immediate and compelling: art that is accessible to all ages, and finds guests in the midst of other discoveries to broaden their understanding of what art is.

ExtraOrdinary!, the museum’s newest exhibition of seven artists and collectives, meets all of the above criteria. Tied together by bright pink signage and lighting across several zones of the museum, this is a show of artwork made from everyday materials. The artists have taken cotton balls, wooden blocks, Lego bricks, burned-out lightbulbs and so much yarn, and turned them into sculptures, installations and interactive artworks.

‘ExtraOrdinary!’ in on view at the Exploratorium (Pier 15, San Francisco) through Sept. 8, 2024.

UAB’s AEIVA marks first 10 years with largest-ever survey of its permanent collection, “Material Resonance,” from May 31-Aug. 10

The creation of the Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts transformed the visual arts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and forever changed the landscape of contemporary art in Birmingham, Alabama.

AEIVA’s inaugural exhibition, “Material Evidence,” curated by Gail Andrews, director Emerita of the Birmingham Museum of Art, pulled from the impressive private collections of some of Birmingham’s most dedicated art collectors and enthusiasts.

Now, in commemoration of its first decade, AEIVA will present the exhibition “Material Resonance,” curated by John Fields, the Lydia Cheney and Jim Sokol Endowed Director of AEIVA. The large-scale survey of more than 60 artists represents many of its most iconic exhibitions from the past decade and offers a glimpse into future exhibitions.

Featured artists will include Willie Cole, Titus Kaphar, Erin LeAnn Mitchell, Quentin Morris, Leslie Wayne and many more.  

An opening reception, free and open to the public, will be from 5:30-7:30 p.m. Friday, May 31, with a walk-through beginning at 5:30 p.m. led by John Fields and AEIVA curator Hannah Spears along with select artists featured in the exhibition.

For the last 12 years BravinLee Editions has been producing limited editioned, hand-knotted rugs designed by artists. The Golden Thread will include editions by Wangechi Mutu, Jonas Wood, Louise Bourgeois and will be debuting its newest rug edition, Original Sin by Willie Cole.

The exhibition The Golden Thread shines a light on a group of exemplary artists who have made of the radical use of textiles their frequent or dedicated métier. Hailing from different parts of the U.S. and beyond, their wildly varied artworks occupy four floors of a landmark 18th century warehouse previously used to store, among other period wares, bails of cotton and bolts of fabric arriving and departing New York’s South Street Seaport. Repurposed by the exhibition’s organizers, Karin Bravin and John Lee—longtime New York dealers and champions of textile art—the building’s 10,000 square feet have been marshaled to array both discrete objects and commissioned installations.

The exhibition brings together over 60 artworks by 59 international artists and artist collectives that treat textiles as a medium perfectly tailored to our distracted and anxious times. As befits a showcase rather than an exhaustive thematic or historical survey, the artworks featured in The Golden Thread run the gamut—from foursquare pictures to three-dimensional artworks, from freestanding sculptures to editioned rugs, from hanging tapestries to immersive environments.

Curated by Karin Bravin & John Post Lee

207 Front Street (South Street Seaport)
April 25, 12-3pm / 4-8pm (Invitation only)
April 26 – May 12, 12-7pm (closed Mondays)
Free and open to the public 
Not wheelchair/stroller accessible

This February, Montclair Art Museum (MAM) will present a landmark exhibition, “Century: 100 Years of Black Art at MAM,” celebrating MAM’s collection of works by Black artists. The opening of “Century” aligns with the beginning of Black History Month, adding another layer of cultural significance to the exhibition.

With over 70 works in various mediums by 59 groundbreaking artists, “Century” is the largest and most comprehensive show of its kind at MAM. Since the 1940s, the museum has committed itself to curating and celebrating the diverse artistry of Black creators, and “Century” stands as a testament to that enduring dedication.

MAM Chief Curator Gail Stavitsky notes that “for many years, the Montclair Art Museum has been committed to the development of a permanent collection of American art that reflects this country’s rich multicultural diversity. Initiated in 1973 with the acquisition of William Edmondson’s sculpture “Po’ch Ladies (ca. 1932-41), this endeavor has gathered momentum, resulting in a major collection of work by Black artists from the late nineteenth century to the present.”

“Century” is curated by Adrienne L. Childs and Nico w.okoro and complemented by a fully illustrated catalog featuring multiple essays that offer insightful explorations of the rich historical and cultural context of Black art. The exhibition has been coordinated at MAM by Chief Curator Gail Stavitsky.

“This exhibition celebrates Black art as a dynamic force that recognizes and represents a variety of lived experiences—a force that heals, activates memory, reveals and questions histories, illuminates the present moment, and serves as a source of pure pleasure.” – Co-curators, Adrienne L. Childs and nico w.okoro

“Century” is organized around six major themes, each highlighting different concerns, visions, and practices that emerge from the rich grouping of artists:

• Black Portraiture explores the significance of Black identity and subverts reductive, often racist, portrayals of Blackness through works by artists such as Dawoud Bey, Adger Cowans, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Gordon Parks and others.

• African Diasporic Consciousness brings together objects by Willie Cole, Melvin Edwards, and other artists who work explicitly and implicitly to transmit cultural values, practices, symbols, and philosophies that have persisted and thrived across vast distances from a shared homeland. 

• Archival Memory considers the capacity of objects by Sanford Biggers, Tomashi Jackson, Todd Gray, Deborah Willis and others—constructed, found, or reimagined—to collectively document and preserve this consciousness.

• Abstraction is also explored with works by Alvin Loving, Howardena Pindell, and others who have used form and color as tools for both personal and collective expressions.

• Black Mythologies showcases how artists like Nick Cave, Lorna Simpson and Saya Woolfalk use the power of myth and spiritual expression to access histories and memories, imagine possible futures, and mine the complex contours of Black life.

• Black Joy and Leisure celebrates the construction of unapologetically Black social spaces, where radical rest and unfettered leisure are expressed without inhibition by artists such as William Edmondson, Carmen Cartiness Johnson and Faith Ringgold.

Additionally, “Century” will showcase how early photography–for instance, Van Der Zee–informs the work of later photographers like Dawoud Bey and Deana Lawson. Also featured in the show are works by Ben Jones and Janet Taylor Pickett, co-founders of MAM’s African American Cultural Committee (AACC).

“Century: 100 Years of Black Art” will run from February 9–June 23, 2024. Get more information, as well as related events supporting the exhibition, at montclairartmuseum.org.

The National Academy of Design exhibition Sites of Impermanence is an exhibition of art and architectural works by the recently elected 2023 National Academicians Alice Adams, Sanford Biggers, Wille Cole, Torkwase Dyson, Richard Gluckman, Carlos Jiménez, Mel Kendrick, and Sarah Oppenheimer.

Although disparate in their approaches to material and subject matter, the artists and architects featured in Sites of Impermanenceform a vivid cross-section of responses to urgent contemporary conditions and the underlying histories that have shaped them. From site-specific projects to sculpture, drawing, architecture, textile, and interactive installation, the selection of works in the exhibition reflects on a bounty of ideas (critical environmental challenges, the ongoing effects of slavery, the blurred lines between human and machine), to chart pathways towards transformation and liberation.

Exhibiting a broad range of art and architectural works, Sites of Impermanenceengages and unpacks a host of temporal and spatial concerns, exploring ideas of impermanence from a thoroughgoing understanding of formal interventions and the mutability of place. Artists Willie Cole and Sanford Biggers employ materials, laden with historical references, culturally and spiritually repurposing the familiar schemas and objects that recur through both their practices.. Architect Richard Gluckman expands the built environment by adapting existing structures to meet the wants of contemporary culture.

Alternatively, architect Carlos Jiménez and artist Torkwase Dyson navigate human, landscape, and urgent ecological concerns. Mel Kendrick’s sculptures invite critical observations on the nature of perceiving place and time, calling attention to how the natural world shapes our perception of place and how both nature and our perception of it change over time. Concerned with an emphasis on aspects of architecture and landscape, Alice Adams’ work deals in the layers of both architecture and the body, recognizing the “skin of architecture,” pointing to internal and external structures like mesh and webbing that undergird many architectural projects.

Sites of Impermanence calls for visitors to consider their impact within public spaces, blurring the boundaries between human, object, and architecture. Pivotal to this premise is Sarah Oppenheimer’s manipulations of architectural space, which are conceived to question our agency and the impacts of our presence in sites that are physical, architectural, and infrastructural.

Sites of Impermanence is co-curated by Sara Reisman, Chief Curator, and Natalia Viera Salgado, Associate Curator.

Opening Saturday, November 18, 2023

Opening Reception 4-7 pm | 835 W. Washington Blvd. Fl. 1

Kavi Gupta presents a solo exhibition surveying the career of acclaimed artist and perceptual engineer Willie Cole.

Cole’s aesthetic position has long been associated with upcycling: the creative reuse of materials that might otherwise be destined for the junkyard. He has made artworks out of old clothes irons, vintage shoes, plastic water bottles, and, most recently, musical instruments.

But there is much more to Cole’s art than implied by a perfunctory analysis of his materials. Unlike so many other objets trouvés artists of the present and the past, whose ideas relate more to simple accumulation, combination, or anti-art sentiment, Cole’s work possesses an underlying humanity that shows he is part of something more profound than aesthetic, or even ecological, trends.

“I feel my work has spirit,” Cole says. “I’m creating art the same way the universe does. I use multiples of single objects. I’m taking a single cell and multiplying it. I work an object to the point where I’m gonna get one beat away from the living thing, and the art tells me when it's there.”

Assembled from a multitude of plastic water bottles arranged in concentric rings, Cole’s plastic bottle chandelier Red Spirit Light cascades down upon viewers as if descending from the heavens. Its menacing, red, cabalistic form shines light on us and directs our attention upward, towards the sun.

Cole’s long-running chandelier series is about more than accumulation. It’s about transformation—familiar objects multiplied, combined, connected, forming something that transcends whatever importance the individual objects once had.

Cole’s use of old clothes irons connects to the various forms of energy associated with this common consumer product. Irons transfer heat energy to a surface in order to eliminate wrinkles. The energy instigates beauty, but if applied too long in one spot, the energy becomes an instrument of destruction, scorching and corrupting something it was supposed to make perfect.

Cole mobilizes the residual energy of irons and the burn marks they leave behind to create evidence of the human condition. In Domestic Shield XV, burn marks are arranged in the shape of a crown, testifying to the nobility of domestic labor. Meanwhile, the skewed, mask-like face of the iron in Untitled (You steam out wrinkles as you iron!) speaks to the ancient and enduring, if often anonymous, significance of such work.

Cole’s shoe sculptures transform women’s vintage, luxury shoes into forms reminiscent of African masks and figures.With My Heart in My Hands resembles a crouched, masked  figure adorned by a magnificent headdress; The Smile that Bites (TSTB) suggests a hidden entity endowed with a playful but sinister disposition; cast in bronze, the cheekily titled Woman in Heels depicts an overtly feminized figure rendered from an assemblage of high heeled shoes.

Cole’s latest project is a series of sculptures assembled from musical instruments. In summer 2023, he unveiled his latest monumental public art installation, a commission for the new Kansas City International Airport terminal. Titled Ornithology, the installation consists of 11 hanging birds made from saxophones, and one more saxophone bird positioned at ground level so passersby can get a look at it up close. The work is an homage to the famous song of the same name, first recorded by Kansas City-born jazz saxophone legend Charlie “Yardbird” Parker, aka “Bird.

Bird’s “Ornithology” is one of the most famous examples in jazz history of a contrafact, a technique where a musician lays a new melody down over a well-known existing chord progression. Contrafaction is about transforming something familiar to give people a chance to understand it in a new way. It’s a perceptual tool, and Cole’s specialty.

Whether in the form of saxophone birds, shoe sculptures, water bottle chandeliers, or iron masks, Cole’s interventions add layers of meaning to the familiar foundations we normally associate with his materials.

Recalling one of the earliest inspirations behind his desire to use multiples to instigate such novel connections between his art and the people who view it, Cole talks about the painter Georges Seurat. Seurat is credited with the invention of pointillism, a visual position in which tiny dots of color are placed next to each other to give the illusion of solid forms.

Seurat was inspired by nature. We live in a world of particles; even though we see solids, it’s an illusion. Where Seurat used multiples of a single dot of paint to achieve his effects, Cole uses multiples of a single object.

Like Seurat, Cole’s intention is to create new ways for people to see.

“Seurat was a perceptual engineer,” Cole says. “That’s also what I call myself.”

Monument is a powerful new exhibition opening to the public on November 10 that takes inspiration from Boundless, the public sculpture on Cameron Art Museum’s grounds by Stephen Hayes honoring the United States Colored Troops (USCT) and their fight for freedom,” the museum release states. “Through their work, artists Radcliffe Bailey, Sonya Clark, Willie Cole, Stephen Hayes, Juan Logan, Alison Saar, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Kara Walker, and others create a dialogue acknowledging, questioning, and confronting the idea of commemoration in the built environment in the United States.

The event is free for CAM members, and $15 for non-members.

Saturday, September 23, 2023 to Sunday, December 17, 2023

Please, Come In… is a critical intervention of conventional museum period rooms. This exhibition features four environments--discotheques, dive bars, living rooms, and bathrooms--that blend and flow fluidly into one another. These spaces have been, and remain, havens for safety, kinship, dreaming, and loving. They evoke feelings of intimacy, interiority, and playfulness. From shag carpet and false eyelashes to fans and photographic slides, this exhibition brings together disparate objects and artworks that document and reference queer methods of assigning meaning vital to these spaces. Please, Come In… highlights the significance of these spaces and the innovators whose creative practices transformed how they are engaged and understood. 

Artists and creators included in the exhibition: David Bandy’s slide collection, Nayland Blake, Paul Cadmus, Nell Campbell, Willie Cole, Howard Finster, Les Gundel, Channing Hansen, Lyle Ashton Harris, Peter Hujar, Robert Lazzarini, Peter Meller, Keith Puccinelli, Mel Ramos, Do-Ho Suh, Marc Swanson, Andy Warhol, and performers at Finocchio’s Club in San Francisco. 

Please, Come In… is organized by the Art, Design & Architecture Museum at UC Santa Barbara and is curated by Sylvia Faichney and Graham Feyl, both UCSB History of Art & Architecture PhD students.

The University of Texas at Tyler has announced that renowned New Jersey-based artist Willie Cole is the inaugural guest speaker for the UT Tyler Department of Art and Art History Inaugural Art Lecture Series. Cole serves as curator/juror for UT Tyler’s 38th Annual International Exhibition, which is currently on display in the UT Tyler Meadows Gallery.

“Introducing the artwork and experience of an internationally renowned artist such as Willie Cole, through his service as a juror for the exhibition and this lecture, is an incredible opportunity for our students, the UT Tyler campus and greater East Texas community,” said Merrie Wright, UT Tyler professor and department chair. “The Department of Art and Art History is thrilled to have him serve as the inaugural speaker for the Art Lecture Series.”

The lecture will be 3:30 p.m. Friday, March 3, in the UT Tyler Ornelas Activity Center, located at 3402 Old Omen Road in Tyler.

He will also present a gallery talk at the exhibition’s closing reception at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 2, at the gallery, located in the UT Tyler R. Don Cowan Fine and Performing Arts Center. Cole chose 35 pieces for this exhibition out of 500 entries from national and international artists.

“At the close of the exhibition, the Department of Art and Art History will choose several works to purchase to add to their permanent collection, which will be used for educational purposes and for display around the UT Tyler campus,” said UT Tyler gallery and media coordinator Michelle Taff.

UT Tyler Meadows Gallery hours are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and by special appointment.

The African American Museum in Philadelphia (AAMP) has welcomed two new exhibits that will be on display at the Museum for the fall and winter seasons: “Vision & Spirit: African American Art | Works from the Bank of America Collection” and “Black Healthcare Studies: Black Students Breaking Barriers in Medicine.”

“Vision & Spirit,” which has been loaned through the Bank of America Art in our Communities program, is a collection of nearly 100 paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, and mixed media works by 48 renowned African American artists born in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Curated in partnership with the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture, artists in the exhibition include Henry Clay Anderson, Chelle Barbour, Romare Bearden, Dawoud Bey, Willie Cole, Murry DePillars, Jacob Lawrence, Whitfield Lovell, Gordon Parks, Faith Ringgold, Jamel Shabazz, and James VanDerZee.

The exhibition, which spans two gallery spaces, focuses on these talented individuals’ strength and spirit as creative forces whose work continues to shape our understanding of the world. “Vision & Spirit” will be on display until February 19, 2023.

In ‘No Strings,’ Willie Cole Transforms Instruments into Abstract Animals and Figurative Sculptures

Artist Willie Cole is known for transforming discarded materials into sculptures with a tenor of interrogation. Much of his three-dimensional work revolves around found objects like high-heels, plastic bottles, or ironing boards that he turns into pieces of cultural commentary, addressing issues of mass production, historical legacies, and identity. The items tend to guide the formation of his assemblages, he says, sharing that, “the objects that I use I see as them finding me, more so than me finding them… I see an object and suddenly I recognize what I can do with the object. So in that sense, there is an energy or spirit connection to the object. I am exploring the possibilities of these objects.”

Cole’s solo show No Strings, which opens this April at Alexander and Bonin in New York, exemplifies this approach. The artist, who’s currently living and working in New Jersey, recovered guitars, saxophones, and pianos from Yamaha’s recycling program and through his usual alchemy, has created anthropomorphic creatures and abstracted figures from their parts: he converts hammers into tail feathers and spliced acoustic bodies into dogs and anonymous musicians. The pieces are expressive and tied to the endurance of America’s past, particularly drawing a connection between the guitar’s shape and the yokes forced on people who were enslaved.



(FRENCHTOWN, NJ) -- ArtYard presents Invisible, an exhibition featuring the work of twelve artists whose practices examine omitted histories, imperceptible forces, and unspoken narratives which render that which is apparent, misleading, or incomplete. In illuminating invisible forms of labor, unspoken emotional states, and unnoticed effects of human presence, the exhibition examines what the author Svetlana Alexievich calls “the missing history — the invisible imprint of our stay on Earth and in time.” Invisible will be on view at ArtYard from January 16 to April 10. 

ArtYard will host an opening reception for Invisible on Saturday, January 15, 2022 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm. Refreshments will be served, and attendees must wear masks and provide identification and proof of vaccination. RSVP required.

Willie Cole’s “Beauties” are portraits of five beloved women from Cole’s personal history cast as weathered ironing boards whose shapes evoke iconic maps of slave-ship holds. Cole’s work mines the meanings of quotidian domestic tools such as irons and hoses in sculpture and prints that reference African iconography and masks. His work has been acquired and exhibited by MoMA, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, National Gallery of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and numerous others. Another work of Cole’s, a chandelier constructed of water bottles, hangs over ArtYard’s theater and is part of ArtYard’s permanent collection.

History Told Slant: Seventy-seven Years of Collecting Art at MSU takes an expansive view of the collection at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, reveling in the great breadth of works within the collection while also confronting the dominant (and domineering) narratives that shape its contours. Taking cue from the great poet and literary figure, Emily Dickinson, who encourages us to “tell all the truth but tell it slant,” the exhibition breaks with conventions of the western art historical canon in order to acknowledge gaps and fissures within the collection. Ultimately, this effort is part of the museum’s ongoing efforts to develop a more inclusive version of the history of art—one less predicated on singular, white, Eurocentric values, favoring instead a plurality of perspectives and voices to help shape the larger narratives.

This survey exhibition results from looking at the collection through several angled lenses. In both literal and figurative ways, the slanted architecture of the Zaha Hadid-designed galleries offers an opportunity to explore shifting perspectives in how we approach and understand art history and the collecting practices that have shaped many museums across the world, including the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum. Key organizing principles that frame the exhibition include the recognition of different visual storytelling and narrative strategies from across different geographies, time periods, and cultures; investigations of how the collection came to be and the ethics of collecting, then and now; and how confronting and learning from the past can help us better determine the course ahead. The exhibition also blends global perspectives with the local with a section focused on the history of art at Michigan State University and in the mid-Michigan region.

History Told Slant thus offers a joyous and illuminating experience, asserting the collection as a source of continued study and appreciation on campus and in our community, while also providing a platform to engage conversations around social and racial justice, colonial histories of exploitation, and the role of art in spreading awareness and cultural competency throughout our communities and the world. 

History Told Slant: Seventy-seven Years of Collecting Art at MSU is organized by the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University with contributions from Senior Curator and Director of Curatorial Affairs Steven L. Bridges; SEEK Graduate Fellow Emma Creamer; former Assistant Curator Georgia Erger; former Assistant Curator Katie Greulich; and Curatorial Research and Administrative Assistants Elijah Hamilton-Wray and Thaís Wenstrom. Support for this exhibition is provided by the Alan and Rebecca Ross endowed exhibition fund.