Madison Museum of Contemporary Art
Announces Upcoming Exhibitions and Major Events
MADISON, WI -- The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) is a nonprofit, independent organization that exists to exhibit, collect, preserve, and interpret modern and contemporary art. The museum is located in a completely new facility as a distinct part of Overture Center for the Arts in downtown Madison, Wisconsin. Like the rest of Overture Center, the museum’s new 60,000-square-foot home, which opened in 2006, was designed by architect Cesar Pelli and made possible by the generosity of W. Jerome Frautschi. MMoCA features exhibitions by regional, national, and international artists, and a permanent collection of approximately 5,000 works.
Exhibitions are free and open to the public. All information in this advance release is subject to change.
LeWitt x 2
Traveling through August 2008
The distinguished American artist Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) is the focus of a two-part exhibition organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. Titled LeWitt x 2, the exhibition documents the arc of LeWitt’s career in Sol LeWitt: Structure and Line, while Selections from The LeWitt Collection showcases the artist’s personal collection, assembled with his wife, Carol Androccio LeWitt.
The exhibition premiered at MMoCA in November 2006 and is currently traveling. The travel schedule includes Miami Art Museum (February 22 – June 3, 2007); the Weatherspoon Art Museum (September 9 – November 18, 2007); the Cincinnati Museum of Art and Contemporary Art Center, Cincinnati (February 9 – May 3, 2008); and the Austin Museum of Art (May 24 – August 17, 2008).
Jasper Johns: The Prints
Through April 13, 2008
Jasper Johns is among the most important American artists of the twentieth century. He is also recognized as one of the greatest printmakers of the modern period. This exhibition surveys the artist’s prints from 1960 to the present, highlighting in over eighty editions his most important achievements in lithography, etching, and screenprinting. It reveals the great range of Johns’ cerebral and sensuous imaginationfrom the targets, flags, and numerals of the 1960s, to the abstract patternings of the 1970s, to his more overtly personal imagery since the mid-1980s.
Jasper Johns: The Prints is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and is installed in the museum’s main galleries.
Photographs by Ida Wyman
Through May 9, 2008
Photographer Ida Wyman, who recently moved to Madison from New York City, began her career at Acme Newspictures in the early 1940s. By 1945, she was taking photographs for magazines such as Life, Business Week, Fortune, and the Saturday Evening Post. Later assignments were published in The New York Times and US Magazine. Throughout her career, Wyman was able to interact simultaneously with the city and the individuals she was photographing. Her carefully composed images depict happiness and hardship, tenderness and apprehension, in semi-rural and urban settings.
Photographs by Ida Wyman is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and is installed in MMoCA’s Works-on-Paper Study Center. The center is open on Fridays from 4 to 6 pm; during First Fridays at MMoCA, and by appointment.
Altered Geometry: Contemporary Sculpture from MMoCA’s Collection
Through May 18, 2008
Altered Geometry: Contemporary Sculpture from MMoCA’s Collection features important works by Sonja Clark, Martin Kersels, and David Nash, among others. While the methods, preferred materials, and critical interests of each artist differ greatly, the geometric forms featured in their sculptures establish a unifying current amongst them.
This exhibition is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and is installed in MMoCA’s State Street Gallery.
Making Visible the Invisible: Abstract Art from MMoCA’s Permanent Collection
Through July 13, 2008
This exhibition, drawn from the museum’s collection, explores the nature of abstract art. Also described as “non-objective” or “non-representational,” abstract art is an expression of pure form and color that does not describe the physical world as seen by the eye. Its history begins in the early twentieth century. As a challenge to the senses and the mind, it has received interpretations from artists and critics that range from perceptual to transcendental. Representing diverse mediapainting, sculpture, textiles, photography, and works on paperthe exhibition includes works by Alexander Calder, Paul Caponigro, Sam Francis, Mary Heilmann, Barbara Hepworth, Ellsworth Kelly, and William Weege, among others.
Making Visible the Invisible is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and is installed in the Henry Street Gallery.
Design MMoCA
April 25–27, 2008 (gala preview: April 24)
What do you find at the intersection of fine art and fine design? A new benefit event at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art invites you to find out. Design MMoCA will welcome visitors to explore 16 one-of-a-kind room vignettes created by local and regional design teams. Each space is inspired by an artwork from MMoCA’s permanent collection, showcasing stellar works of art while giving visitors the opportunity to view interiors by some of the region's most creative and ingenious designers.
Design MMoCA will take place in the museum’s main galleries, lobby, and lecture hall, and will feature a design lecture series, reading room, and lobby lounge, in addition to the three-day showcase of vignettes.
TL Solien: Myths & Monsters
May 17–August 17, 2008
Throughout his long and prolific career, TL Solien has created paintings, prints, and drawings that interweave literal and metaphorical layers in an effort to convey the complex thoughts and emotions that occupy his mind. Solien has been an influential figure in the Midwest for decades, and is known nationally for canvases that explore personal thought with a dense visual lexicon of created and appropriated images. TL Solien: Myths & Monsters will feature works from the 1980s, as he explored life as a new father, to current works that employ literary figures as repositories for his thoughts and fears.
This exhibition is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and will be installed in the museum’s main galleries.
Girls and Company: Feminist Works from MMoCA’s Permanent Collection
May 24–July 20, 2008
Girls and Company: Feminist Works from MMoCA’s Permanent Collection examines the legacy of feminism today through works of art in the museum’s permanent collection. The works in this showpaintings, photographs, and prints from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990sexamine female bodies, female icons, language, and the underlying system of sexism that has affected so many artists. Featuring thoughtful and ground-breaking works by Marisol, Joan Brown, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer, and the infamous women’s collaborative, the Guerrilla Girls, Girls and Company uncovers the persistent issues that confronted these artists, while also posing the question: what does it mean to be a feminist artist today?
This exhibition is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and will be installed in the museum’s State Street Gallery.
Art Fair on the Square – 50th Anniversary
July 12 and 13, 2008
In May of 1959, a small sidewalk art sale was set up in the Brookwood Shopping Center by a select group of volunteers from the Madison Art Association. Fifty years later that small event has become an essential part of summer in Madison. Encompassing the eight city blocks that surround the state of Wisconsin’s Capitol Concourse, Art Fair on the Square brings together nearly five hundred artists and entertainers. Thanks to a history of high-quality art, this event continues to enjoy a prestigious reputation among both artists and collectors.
Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt: The Absent City
August 2–November 16, 2008
Miami-based artists Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt, who were trained as architects in Argentina, will create a three-part installation in MMoCA’s lobby and State Street Gallery. A curtain of ribbons in the museum’s glass icon will be complemented by a salon-like “reading room” with two-dimensional works and furniture in the museum’s lobby. The third work, an installation of ribbons in the State Street Gallery, will be arranged in trapezoidal conglomerations to recreate the organic layout of a medieval city.
Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt: The Absent City is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.
George Segal: Street Scenes
September 13–December 28, 2008
George Segal: Street Scenes will showcase the work of this noted American sculptor for a new generation of museum visitors. Segal (1924-2000) is widely recognized as one of the great American sculptors. He used plaster, found objects, and an innovative working process to make his large-scale sculptures. Focusing on human interactions and everyday events in the urban setting, the exhibition includes works from the 1960s, when Segal first began using plaster, to the 1980s and 1990s, as he documented the effects of economic change on urban environments.
This exhibition is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and will be installed in MMoCA’s main galleries. After opening at MMoCA, George Segal: Street Scenes will travel to the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, MO; and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Legion of Honor. A richly illustrated catalogue with essays by Stephen Fleischman, Martin Friedman, and Jane Simon will accompany the exhibition.
Barbara Probst: Exposures
Dec 6, 2008–March 8, 2009
This exhibition is comprised of groupings from Barbara Probst’s series Exposures, which she began in 2000 and continues to expand. The series dissects the relationship between the photographic “moment” and perceived reality by showing a single action from numerous points of view.
This exhibition is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, and will be installed in MMoCA’s State Street Gallery.
___________
Hours at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art are Tuesday–Wednesday (11 am–5 pm); Thursday-Friday (11 am–8 pm); Saturday (10 am–8 pm); and Sunday (noon–5 pm). The museum is closed on Mondays.
Admission to exhibitions at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is free of charge. MMoCA is supported through memberships and through generous contributions and grants from individuals, corporations, agencies, and foundations. Important support is also generated through auxiliary group programs; special events; rental of the museum’s lobby, lecture hall, and rooftop garden; and sales through the Museum Store.
###
