WEISMAN ART MUSEUM
EXHIBITIONS | FALL 2016 – SPRING 2017

Silver River - August 13, 2016 through February 12, 2017
Rivers have always been an important source for life. They have an abundance of fresh water, are essential in commerce and industry for mercantile passages and hydropower, and have provided artistic inspiration for centuries. It took early two hundred years for America to catch up to the negative environmental consequences of the industrialization of the Great River. Maya Lin’s sculpture and namesake of the exhibition, Silver River (2007), serves as an entry point of conversation for contemporary artists’ thoughts on the current state of the Upper Mississippi River. Many of the contemporary works display the impurities and damming of this polluted river, while reflecting on the Mississippi River’s role in American history as the shining silvery light of opportunity, stimulating artists from the nineteenth century to today.
Image: Luke Ericson, Throwing Stones, Mississippi River, Minneapolis, MN, 2003, pigmented inkjet print.

The Talking Cure - September 3, 2016 through April 30, 2017
A multi-media project by New York-based sculptor Melissa Stern explores the traditional media of clay sculpture and drawing and blended with creative writing and the spoken word. The figural sculptures were drawn from the artist’s imagination and created out of clay, wood, found objects, and other materials. Stern then invited twelve writers including poets, screenwriters, playwrights, and novelists to write monologues and give voice to the internal thoughts of the sculptures. Actors then read the monologues without direction from the artist or writers.

Pan American Modernism: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America and the United States - October 8, 2016 through January 1, 2017
Pan American Modernism explores the rich visual dialogue between sixty-nine significant artists—including Diego Rivera, Joaquín Torres-García, Wifredo Lam, Man Ray, Lee Krasner, and Fernando Botero—from twelve countries. The exhibition highlights a sixty-year period of artistic exchange during 1919 to 1979 in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay, Venezuela, and the United States, to construct a fuller understanding of modernism as a phenomenon that spanned the Americas. By rejecting a North American-centric view, Pan American Modernism demonstrates that these artists were not working in isolation; rather, the global influences of Central and South American artists contributed to the experimental, innovative nature of modernism through paintings, sculptures, photographs, mixed media pieces, and works on paper. Pan American Modernism was developed by Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, with tour organized by International Arts & Artists, Washington, DC.
Image: José Mijares, Untitled, ca 1945, oil on wood.

The Beautiful Brain: Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal - January 28, 2017 through May 14, 2017
Santiago Ramón y Cajal, considered the father of modern neuroscience, was also an exceptional artist. He drew the brain in a way that provided a clarity exceeding that achieved by photographs. He combined scientific and artistic skills to produce drawings with extraordinary scientific and aesthetic qualities. His theory that the brain is composed of individual cells rather than a tangled single web is the basis of neuroscience today. This traveling exhibition of Cajal’s original drawings was organized by the Weisman Art Museum in collaboration with Eric Newman, Alfonso Araque, and Jan Dubinsky, neuroscientists at the University of Minnesota and leaders in the field of neuroscience. Dr. Araque was formerly at the Instituto Cajal in Madrid, where Cajal worked and where his drawings are housed. The exhibit is organized in collaboration with Ricardo Martinez Murillo, neuroscientist and curator of the Cajal Legacy at the Cajal Institute (CSIC) in Spain. Eighty of Cajal’s drawings, many appearing for the first time in the United States, will be accompanied by a selection of contemporary visualizations of the brain, photographs, historic books, and scientific tools. After the debut at WAM, the exhibition will travel to university galleries and museums, throughout the United States and Canada.

Dear Darwin - February 25, 2017 through July 23, 2017
Featuring the work of local artists Vesna Kittleson and Carolyn Halliday, and New York-based artist Julia Randall, Dear Darwin presents their individual explorations on the themes of natural science, evolution, and the figure of Darwin himself. Kittleson’s books present imaginary “evolved” flowers from Mrs. Darwin’s Garden while Halliday presents passages on evolution written on forms knitted from sausage casings. Randall’s large drawings present creatures and plants that have advanced beyond imagination.
Image: Vesna Kittleson, Mrs. Darwin’s Garden, Book Four, 2014, ink and pencil on paper.

Press Contact: Erin Lauderman, 612.625.9685, elauderm@umn.edu