Bamana “Mudcloth”: UWM Art Collection Research

bogolanfini Object 2009.002.24

Object ID: 2009.002.24 Object Name: Textile Artist/Maker: Unrecorded Bamana artist Culture: Bamana People, Mali Title: Bamana “Mudcloth” Medium: Woven textiles and resist-dye Dimension Details: H-67 W-45 inches On Campus Collection: UWM Art Collection Gift of Mark and Mary Jo Wentzel… Read More

Open Parameters—late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s Chinese calligraphy and painting from the Zhou Cezong’s donation

Thursday, April 13 2023 5:00pm - 7:00pm

Emile H. Mathis Gallery, Mitchell 170

Open Parameters Poster

Please join us Thursday, April 13th at 5PM for the graduate thesis exhibition opening of Open Parameters—late nineteenth and early twentieth century’s Chinese calligraphy and painting from the Zhou Cezong’s donation curated by Jingwei Zeng.

This exhibition explores the diversity and heterogeneity of late nineteenth and early twentieth Chinese calligraphy and painting. The art in this period has always been denigrated as the reflection of cultural stagnation and national humiliation. However, through the prism of material culture, this exhibition demonstrates its extraordinary resilience and splendor amid unprecedented levels of political and social turmoil. This exhibition also challenged the long-established terms such as “traditionality” and “modernity” to define Chinese fin de siècle art: instead of seeing them as mutually exclusive concepts with fixed characteristics, this exhibition redefines them as fluid categories that existed in the vast crucible of cultural choices—choices made available by the influence of the late Ming literati and Western influence.

Free Opening Reception:
Thursday, April 13th, 5-7pm
Curator Gallery Talk 5:30pm

Negotiating Authenticity: Reproducing the Past for the Present

Thursday, April 13 2023 5 pm

Emile H. Mathis Gallery

Please join us Thursday, April 13th at 5PM for the graduate thesis exhibition opening of Negotiating Authenticity: Reproducing the Past for the Present curated by David Symanzik-Stock. The exhibit will be open until May 11th, 2023 and, as always, the Mathis Gallery is free and open to the public.

Negotiating Authenticity: Reproducing the Past for the Present explores how reproductions connect us to the past. From Rembrandt restrikes to plastic souvenirs, reproductions occupy an important chapter in an object’s biography. This exhibition explores the complex relationships between ‘original’ artifacts and their reproductions. It considers how this ongoing dialogue blurs the boundaries between materiality and authenticity and, in the process, manifests in our desire to build bridges between the past and the present.

Free Opening Reception
Thursday, April 13th, 5-7pm
Curator Gallery Talk 5:30pm

Ethiopian String Instrument: UWM Art Collection Research

krar

Research on an object from the UWM Art Collection at the the Emile H. Mathis gallery by Mirel Crumb. I had the wonderful opportunity to be able to learn more about an object in the UWM Art Collection at the… Read More

Public Talk on Craft and Globalism

Tuesday, April 18 2023 6:00pm

Mitchell 191

Folk-arts for peace: HemisFair ’68 and the Cultural Olympics in México’s 1968 Olympiad during the Global Cold War

Guest: Dr. Deborah Dorotinsky Alperstein

Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas of the Universidad Autónoma de México (UNAM)

This lecture will center on folk art (handcraft / arte-popular) as a cultural agent during the Global Cold War in 1968. It will highlight the place of handcraft in the cultural diplomacy between Mexico and the United States during the sixties and bring to the fore two international exhibitions.

 

Dr. Dorotinsky currently serves as the project leader for Popular Arts, an effort to create a network of scholars both in Latin American and elsewhere whose work deals with contemporary Latin American art and specifically “popular” art objects, i.e. crafts and diseño artisanal. The purpose of the project is to critique and revise accepted categories (as well as definitions, terms, etc.) of these objects. Dr. Dorotinsky and her colleagues argue that these categories are politically contingent, often exploitative, and troublingly institutionalized.

PDF Flyer

Sponsored by the Department of Art History with co-sponsorship from Anthropology, Center for 21st Century Studies, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Emile H. Mathis Gallery, History, and Spanish

New blog post from Tanya Tiffany, “The Infanta Ana and the Infant Christ”

Read Professor Tiffany’s latest post on the website, AGENART, https://agenart.org/blog/.    

Matthew Rarey to publish book “Insignificant Things”

In Insignificant Things Matthew Francis Rarey traces the history of the African-associated amulets that enslaved and other marginalized people carried as tools of survival in the Black Atlantic world from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Often considered visually benign by white… Read More