The Mint Museum has added four new exhibitions to its lineup for 2012, beginning with one opening this month that pays tribute to two treasured patrons of the local arts community, Emily and Zach Smith.
Colorbind: The Emily and Zach Smith Collection will be on view at Mint Museum Uptown from April 28 through August 12, and runs concurrently with the previously-announced multimedia Matthew Weinstein spotlight exhibition on view April 28-August 19. Colorbind consists of nearly two dozen paintings, lithographs, etchings, and drawings collected by the Smiths.
“Colorbind offers our visitors the opportunity to experience a selection of works by some of the most important modern and contemporary artists of the 20th and 21st centuries,” said Brad Thomas, the Mint’s curator of contemporary art. “More importantly, it offers an intimate glimpse into a private collection that informs and enlivens the everyday lives of Emily and Zach Smith, two of our region’s most important cultural supporters. We are extremely grateful to the Smiths for making this work available for display at the Mint for the benefit of our community.”
For over three decades, the Smiths have tirelessly dedicated themselves to improving the cultural infrastructure of this region. Through their patronage and extensive service on various boards including the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, The Mint Museum, Opera Carolina, and Penland School of Crafts, to name a few, their community investment has touched the lives of countless individuals.
This intimate display of works illuminates a decidedly more personal side of the couple’s relationship to art. One small landscape painting on view by North Carolina artist Claude Howell (1915 - 1997) was selected jointly even before their marriage. It was an auspicious beginning for lives that would be bound by a devotion to family, community, and the arts.
As for their own personal taste in visual art, the Smiths confess a shared love of color. Works by Pop artists Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Wayne Thiebaud play alongside geometric abstractions by Peter Halley, Sol Lewitt, and Sean Scully –– vibrant color binding each creative voice into the collectors’ unified vision. This exhibition is organized by The Mint Museum.
“Colorbind and the other three exhibitions we are announcing today further the Mint’s role of serving the increasingly global community of Charlotte and beyond,” said Dr. Kathleen V. Jameson, President & CEO of the Mint. “From celebrating treasured local art collectors in the Smiths to tapping the unparalleled scope of our Fashion Collection to showcasing the unique and diverse viewpoints of renowned artists Vik Muniz and Beverly McIver, the Mint offers depth and range that is unmatched.”
Both Colorbind and Matthew Weinstein will be celebrated at a special event at 6:30 p.m. May 3 at Mint Museum Uptown at Levine Center for the Arts, 500 South Tryon Street. Weinstein, a multimedia artist, will appear with Robert Goolrick, acclaimed author of A Reliable Wife. After a viewing of Weinstein’s short film “The Childhood of Bertolt Brecht,” the artist and the author will discuss the importance of the role of narrative in art. The event costs $10 for Mint members; $20 for non-members; free to students with valid ID; and includes a reception immediately following. Pre-registration is required; visit mintmuseum.org and click “Calendar.”
And the Bead Goes On
26 May 2012 – 17 February 2013
Mint Museum Randolph
May brings the opening of the next exciting exhibition from the Mint’s nationally-renowned collection of fashion. The Mint has recently renamed its Historic Costume & Fashionable Dress collection the Fashion Collection.
And the Bead Goes On pays tribute to a form of ornamentation that has been used to enliven fashion designs since ancient times. Originally restricted to the wardrobes of aristocrats and made of precious materials, beads indicated wealth and status in numerous cultures throughout the globe. Sometimes beadwork was employed on garments to convey rank, spiritual significance, or protection of the wearer. Colorful and sparkling beads appeared on articles of clothing, ceremonial dress, ritual masks, and everyday objects.
And the Bead Goes On features 20th- and 21st-century women’s fashions, which display inventive beadwork embroidery. This seemingly modern surface decoration, the variety of bead materials and shapes, and the basic sewing techniques used to embellish the works on view were developed in Paris workshops in the 18th century. Talented designers and skillful artisans collaborate to achieve dazzling fashions that are comfortable and durable. Glass beads, metallic sequins, metal filigree beads, faux pearls, and faceted crystal rhinestones hand-sewn onto the cloth impart beauty, opulence, and artful originality.
Fashion was democratized in the 1960s, and previously exclusive beaded style became available to all. The fashion industry today, while still centered in Paris, includes major designers from India, Lebanon, and Nigeria, and elsewhere. And the Bead Goes On presents evening gowns, cocktail dresses, and ensembles from the museum’s Fashion Collection, complemented with exciting new works on loan from contemporary designers. Designer names featured in the exhibition include Halston, Bob Mackie, Giorgio Armani, Oscar de la Renta, and Alber Elbaz for Lanvin.
This exhibition, organized by The Mint Museum, will open at Mint Museum Randolph concurrently with the previously-announced Heritage Gallery, a look through the Mint’s 75-year history as the oldest art museum in North Carolina.
VantagePoint X: Vik Muniz
25 August – 4 November 2012
Mint Museum Uptown
Although Vik Muniz was born into poverty in Rio de Janeiro in 1961, he has arguably become the most famous contemporary Brazilian artist. His conceptual photographs are exhibited internationally, and he is represented in significant museum collections throughout the world. Beginning his art career in the mid-1980s after relocating to the U.S., Muniz established a studio in Brooklyn, where he creates large photographs that mimic recognizable images borrowed from the media or historical paintings.
Muniz’s recreations of famous paintings are notable for their uncanny attention to detail and the non-traditional nature of the media he chooses. Muniz painstakingly gathers such discarded objects as tires, bolts, coils of wire, broken appliances, and soda cans, arranging them on a warehouse floor in piles and layers to create representations of iconic paintings by historical artists. After this labor-intensive process is complete, Muniz photographs the massive creation from a balcony above, thereby preserving the final appearance before the image is disassembled.
Collectively, Muniz’s photographs bring to mind ideas of ecology, impermanence, and mortality. Muniz’s photographs, which intentionally incorporate discarded materials, implicate the viewer in a consumerist, transitory culture. His photographs fuse two important strands of postmodern photography—staging and appropriation. Staging, which is the creation of an image through choreographing all visual components of the photograph; and appropriation, which is borrowing imagery from a source of reference, in this case historically significant paintings from the Western tradition. The resulting photographs are both fascinating and disarming, and probe the function and traditions of visual representation. This exhibition is organized by The Mint Museum.
Reflections: Portraits by Beverly McIver
20 October 2012 – 6 January 2013
Mint Museum Uptown
McIver, a native of North Carolina, is renowned for her expression-filled, emotive canvases that commemorate her life and the lives of those closest to her — in particular, her mother, Ethel, who passed away in 2004, and her sister, Renee, who is mentally disabled. The exhibition celebrates the last decade of her work and highlights these two subjects, focusing solely on her self-portraits and on portraits of Renee and other family members.
McIver is widely acknowledged as a significant presence in contemporary American art, examining racial, gender, and social identities through the lens of her own experiences as an African American female artist. The history of her family allows McIver to contemplate and illustrate the complicated emotions that arise from these situations, including depression, frustration, tender compassion, and innocent joy.
Accompanied by an exhibition catalogue, Reflections includes numerous loans from the artist, private collections, and select museums. Organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art, this exhibition is made possible, in part, by the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources; the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Inc.; and the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment for Educational Exhibitions.
ABOUT THE MINT MUSEUM
As the oldest art museum in North Carolina, and the art museum with one of the largest collections in the Southeast, The Mint Museum offers its visitors inspiring and transformative experiences through art from around the world via innovative collections, ground-breaking exhibitions, riveting educational programs, and profound scholarship. The Mint Museum is a non-profit, visual arts institution comprised of two dynamic facilities: Mint Museum Uptown and Mint Museum Randolph.
Located in what was the original branch of the United States Mint, Mint Museum Randolph opened in 1936 in Charlotte’s Eastover neighborhood as the state’s first art museum. Today, in a beautiful park setting, intimate galleries invite visitors to engage with the art of the ancient Americas, ceramics and decorative arts, fashion, European and African art, among other collections. Resources include a reference library with over 18,000 volumes, a theater featuring lectures and performances, and a museum shop offering merchandise that complements both the permanent collection and special exhibitions.
Mint Museum Uptown houses the internationally renowned Craft + Design collection, as well as outstanding collections of American, contemporary, and European art. Designed by Machado and Silvetti Associates of Boston, the five-story, 145,000-square-foot facility combines inspiring architecture with cutting-edge exhibitions to provide visitors with unparalleled educational and cultural experiences. Located in the heart of Charlotte’s burgeoning center city, Mint Museum Uptown is an integral part of the Levine Center for the Arts, a cultural campus that includes the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts and Culture, the Knight Theater, and the Duke Energy Center. Mint Museum Uptown also features a wide range of visitor amenities, including the 240-seat James B. Duke Auditorium, the Lewis Family Gallery, art studios, a restaurant, and a museum shop. For more information, check out mintmuseum.org.
