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- Jezzalie Gill (Drawing 1)
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NEWSLETTERS
BLOGS
This section includes links to important information for current students in CVAD. Links will be added and updated throughout the year. Please check back regularly! For informaiton on events and activities, see CVAD on Facebook.
UNT Academic Calendar 2010-2011
Campus art installation guidelines
This week in the Lightwell Gallery: Senior Printmaking Exhibit
Art has been a vital part of UNT since it was first taught in 1894, just four years after the institution was founded. Dr. Cora Stafford, an imaginative leader who served on the faculty and as director for four decades before retiring in 1964, played a major role in guiding the art program to the reputation it maintains today. Determined to keep the program aligned with new ideas, she hired young innovators on the faculty. These included James Prestini and Gyorgy Kepes, two early proponents, in the United States, of the Bauhaus system which endeavored to relate a new design approach to the world of technology and craft. Also on the faculty were Carlos Merida, the internationally known Guatemalan painter and muralist, as well as Octavio Medellin, the celebrated Mexican sculptor and painter. Students included Ray Gough, who became a noted interior designer and UNT professor, and O'Neil Ford, who became one of Texas' most famous architects.
Masters degrees were initiated in the 1930s and the first MS degree in art was awarded in 1937 to Ms. Ann Bookman Williams, a long-time art teacher in the campus demonstration school. UNT's modern art program has been one of continual growth. After World War II, professional programs in advertising art, fashion design and interior design supplemented traditional studio and art education programs. Following an extensive study of the arts in Texas by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board in the 1960s, North Texas was designated as a major visual arts program in the State and was approved to offer the BFA, MFA, and Ph.D. degrees beginning in 1971. With the Southwest's demographic population shift in the late 1970's and early 1980's, enrollment increased dramatically. At the same time, the department's comprehensive art programs were being recognized for their quality.
Alumni Featured in Texas Monthly
Andrea Karnes, who grew up in Fort Worth, earned art history degrees from the University of North Texas and Texas Christian University. She has worked at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth since 1989.
"This is my twentieth year at the Modern, and I still get the question, What is a curator? Traditionally it meant "caretaker of the objects," but now, in the context of a modern art museum, it's the person who has the idea for an exhibition, negotiates to borrow artworks, arranges how those pieces will be displayed, and writes the accompanying catalog, which requires a lot of research. In a way, being a curator is analogous to being a lawyer. You have to pick an argument about a certain artist or group of artists and try to convince viewers of that argument.
"For example, I'm currently working on a big show featuring the young American painter Barnaby Furnas. This exhibition, which will open in 2012 and be called “States of Glory,” aims to prove that he’s one of the best artists of his generation. Some of his abstract paintings are only five strokes on a gigantic canvas, which is a scary thing to do, considering he’s coming several decades after the Abstract Expressionists. His historical subject matter is interesting too, because he picks figures—Civil War soldiers, Abraham Lincoln, John Brown—who are heroes but have some tragic aspect to them. He’s really bold.
The Modern’s chief curator, Michael Auping, always reminds me that you can only do so many shows in your career, so each one needs to be something you absolutely want to do. I keep a lot of files on artists, and when I’m convinced one is worth pursuing, I arrange to see his or her work in person. I try to go to New York twice a year and the West Coast at least once a year, and I go to the biennial international art exhibitions—there’s one in Venice—because I get a lot of mileage out of those. I also get leads from artists I’ve worked with, and I do a ton of studio visits. On average it takes three or four years to put a show together, so it’s a challenge to stay fully engaged, but I don’t get tired of these projects.
The Modern has about 53,000 square feet of gallery space, and it usually takes a minimum of fifty works to fill one floor. Because somebody owns each piece of art, there can be a lot of negotiating—and paperwork—to get the ones we want. Most collectors feel a responsibility to the artist to let his or her work be seen, but there have been times when I couldn’t convince someone to lend us something.
There’s an empty office upstairs that we call the “war room,” where we have huge floor plans of each gallery laid out on tables. The preparators make scaled-down maquettes of each piece of art, and I move those around to figure out how they should be arranged. But even though I know the ambience of the space and the works intimately, the arrangement always changes when the art arrives and we unwrap everything. Then I’m pacing around the galleries, looking at each piece, thinking, How should I move it around? How can I make it better within the exhibition? And maybe there’s a work that can’t be opened until its courier arrives to watch as it comes out of its crate and is hung on the wall, which means I can’t change my mind later on. So that’s part of the puzzle too.
I’m an anomaly in the curator world because I’ve spent my whole career at the same museum. I grew up going to the Modern, but it wasn’t until my mother took me to Italy when I was twelve and we went to the museums in Rome, Florence, and Milan that I realized how much art reflects the time, history, and culture of a place. Then, when I was in high school, I went to Holland as an exchange student. I explored the city of Lei-den, which is Rembrandt’s hometown, and all these great museums, like the Rijskmuseum, in Amsterdam, and I knew, “All right, when I go home, this is what I’m pursuing.”
Now, I had no idea what that meant in terms of a job, but after pursuing an art history degree in college, I found a position as the receptionist at the Modern. I worked my way up to research assistant and then took over as registrar, which meant that, much like a school registrar keeps track of each student, I had to keep track of each object. So if somebody wanted to borrow one of our Anselm Kiefers or Andy Warhols, I had to accompany the artwork wherever it went. It was the coolest job on the planet; we had very active loans, so I saw much of Europe, the U.S., and Mexico. Still, what I really wanted was to be a curator, so I decided to get a master’s degree in art history. Slowly but surely, I was promoted to assistant curator and then to associate curator and finally, in 2005, to curator.
Two of the pieces I’ve helped acquire for the permanent collection have become especially popular. One is Kehinde Wiley’s Colonel Platoff on His Charger. It’s of a young, urban black guy who has replaced the original sitter in what looks like an eighteenth-
century equestrian portrait. I think one of the reasons it’s a favorite is because a lot of high schoolers and college students relate to the young man. The other is Sharp’s Rifle Shop, by Rosson Crow, who is a darling of the art world right now. She’s painted things that you recognize, like cabinets that hold guns, and combined them with sprays and drips of paint all over the canvas, so that it looks like a fireworks display. People respond to it because it’s so energetic—it’s one of our largest paintings—but also because she’s from Texas.
Both Wiley and Crow have been the subject of a “Focus” exhibition, which is a small show I put together three times a year to feature different emerging contemporary artists. For many, this is their first solo museum show, and it’s my job to help them edit their work; I’ll look at, say, a hundred pieces and choose the ten that should be included. In December we’ll be featuring Erik Parker, a San Antonio native who creates these funky, tragic portraits in bright colors. They usually include a phrase—“Why me?” or “Player hater”—that is a satirical commentary on our culture. It’s satisfying to work with artists like Parker who are young in their careers. You don’t know where they’re going to be in ten years, but it’s exciting to know that you could be a stepping stone for them along the way.
As Told To Jordan Breal of Texas Monthly Online on July 21, 2010
Mission:
To engage our diverse student population with issues of artistic heritage, stimulate their imagination and involvement with the world, foster their critical and analytical thinking, and inspire their creativity through educational opportunities in art education, art history, design, and studio arts, all supported by a vital program of creative research.
Goals:
Access:
To provide undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom are first generation college students, access to outstanding programs;
Pursuit of Excellence:
To recruit and retain highly qualified students, to develop student potential, and to manage selective degree programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels, providing a high quality environment that prepares students to become leading professionals in their fields;
Service to the Region and the World:
To provide programming and access to resources in collaboration with educational, governmental, and cultural agencies, reflecting our role as part of a multi-campus university system integrated into the Dallas/Ft. Worth/ Denton metropolitan area and networked world-wide; and
Prominence:
To ensure the prominence of our students, faculty, programs, and institutes regionally, nationally, and internationally and to continue our role as leaders in visual arts education.
Gifts to the College of Visual Arts and Design at UNT allow the College to pursue excellence. These gifts insure that CVAD can attract top graduate and undergraduate students through Scholarships. These gifts also make possible CVAD’s Visiting Artists/Scholar programs, Faculty Enrichment Opportunities, and support to each of the hallmark Institutes housed within the College of Visual Arts and Design. If you think your gifts aren't important, think again. Supporting CVAD through endowments or the Annual Fund helps secure the arts for future generations.
You can see our recent activities online or in the Avant-Garde. Please take a moment and join us in pursuing excellence. We value your gifts as they are an endorsement of the University of North Texas, College of Visual Arts and Design. If you have any questions, or you would like more information on how you can be a partner, please contact CVAD Development Director Eva James Toia at 940-565- 4026. You may contribute to CVAD (and the program of your choice) online at: Give to UNT, or you may print out the Donation Form, and mail in with your gift to:
Mailing Address:
CVAD ANNUAL FUND
1155 Union Circle #305100
Denton, Texas 76203.
SPECIAL APPEALS:
Join the Dress Circle and support the Texas Fashion Collection, and Fashion on Main.
Two scholarships at CVAD specifically benefit from your support through purchases of artworks. For information on supporting the Jack Sprague Communication Design Scholarship, see "Photography by Communication Design Professor Jack Sprague" .
For information on supporting the Jean Andrews Scholarship, see Jean Andrews Pepper Painting on the CVAD website under "CVAD Images" and the "Image Anthology"
