The Week Ahead @ the Henry

Here’s what’s happening this week at the Henry!

Wednesday, April 24th
12-12:30 pm – Art Break Tour: Henry Exhibition Guides will encourage a lively discussion around a selection of objects in our exhibitions.

Thursday, April 25th
7-8 pm – Music of Today with Abby Aresty. Abby Aresty, a UW School of Music graduate student, investigates the role of breath in music through creative manipulations of a performer’s relationship to her own breath. This performance is part of the UW’s ongoing centennial celebration of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

Have you seen Sean Scully: Passages/Impressions/Surfaces yet?

Bocanegra and McDormand perform “Bodycast” tonight

Actor Frances McDormand and artist Suzanne Bocanegra

Tonight at the Henry, we welcome artist Suzanne Bocanegra who, with Academy Award-winning actor Frances McDormand, will tell a multimedia story of Titian, girls’ drill teams, rose queens, scoliosis, and the history of how artists are taught to make art, and how all of us are taught to look at it. The performance is sold out.

Based in New York, Suzanne Bocanegra’s work  involves large-scale performance and installation, frequently translating two dimensional information, images and ideas from the past into three dimensional scenarios for staging, movement, ballet, and music. Bocanegra’s work has been seen in exhibitions in the United States and abroad, in such venues as the Serpentine Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Hayward Gallery in London, the Armand Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the Fabric Workshop in Philadelphia. Her theatrical, video, and film work has been presented at the Bang on Can Festival, the New Haven Festival of Art and Ideas, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and as part of the Wordless Music series in New York.

Bodycast is organized by the Henry and presented in partnership with the UW School of Drama. The School of Drama investigates the art of theatre and performance — its practice, history, meaning — and fosters a spirit of inquiry by providing artists and scholars with tools for critical and inventive thinking and opportunities for practical application. Check out their 2012-2013 Season HERE.

Photo credit: Hammer Museum

SANCTUM readies for a May Opening

“In an era of status updates, tweets, and check-ins, the geography of public, shared spaces needs to be reconsidered, along with our expectations of privacy in them.”
-James Coupe and Juan Pampin

Have you noticed all of the changes on the façade of the Henry? We are currently installing an interactive art piece, Sanctum, created by artists James Coupe and Juan Pampin. Coupe and Pampin were chosen in 2010 from 91 applications who answered an open international call, soliciting proposals for a site-specific project to transform the façade of the museum’s main entrance and to engage the UW population and the many visitors who pass by the Henry every day.

Sanctum, which officially opens May 4th, seeks to investigate the narrative potential of social media while raising important and provocative questions about the conflicting imperatives emerging in our culture as we promote and embrace ever-more-intrusive electronic media, while still cherishing traditional notions of privacy.

From those who choose to participate in the project, Sanctum will actively gather information via sophisticated surveillance and profiling technology and match it with data drawn from social media sites to shape original plausible and implausible fictional narratives.

To learn more about the project and to contribute with narrative content, please enter here. You can also opt in by scanning the QR codes are posted on signage outside the museum.

New Art in Molly’s: Shorecrest High School

Shorecrest High School Student Art

Molly’s Cafe at the Henry Art Gallery has quarterly shows of artwork from community organizations. Path with Art, a non-profit organization which provides marginalized adults the opportunity to engage in the creative process as a unique means to improve and rebuild their lives, was up over the winter quarter. If you missed that show, Path with Art currently has an exhibit, Our Landscape, installed in Plymouth’s window space, on 3rd between Lenora & Blanchard in Belltown.

This quarter, the show is from Shorecrest High School art students organized by teacher, Laura King. Here is a letter from Laura explaining the show:

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Happy New Year, dear Hankblog readers! We here at the Henry hope that you have had a most wonderful and rejuvenating holiday and New Year! We are really excited about 2013 and hope that you will be as well!

Here are some of the upcoming events and exhibitions in store for you at the Henry in early 2013:

Graduate Student Happy Hour on January 10th.
The Reconstruction of Nijinsky’s Rite of Spring on January 11th and the rest of the Rite of Spring Series.
Now Here is Also Nowhere: Part I will be closing this Sunday, but Part II will be opening January 26th.
An Evening of Endingness on February 1st.
Henry Gala on February 9th.
Sean Scully: Passages/Impressions/Surfaces opens February 16th.
The Dowsing opens on February 23rd.

 

Recurring:
Student Led Tours every Saturday and Second Wednesdays at 12 noon.

Check out all of the other Henry Haps on our website or our facebook and watch out for our updated newsletter!

P.S. Stephen Sewell, who exhibited at the Henry’s University of Washington MFA Exhibition in 2012, has a new exhibition at 4Culture which opens tomorrow!

Molly’s Hours During Winter Break

With the holidays coming up and UW on Winter Break, Molly’s will begin truncated hours this Saturday.

From December 15th through January 6th, Molly’s will be open 10:30-1:30, Thursday through Sunday.

As always, it’s a great place to grab a hot drink, enjoy some delicious nosh, and to combat museum fatigue!

Guest Blog from Rebecca Migdal, Summer Intern

Throughout the year, the Henry offers a variety of student internships in different departments. Find current opportunities here. This past summer, Rebecca Migdal, a Lois F. McNeil Fellow and  graduate student in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware, interned in the collections department under our Curator of Collections, Judy Sourakli. She recently blogged a reflection of her internship at the Henry on the University of Delaware’s Museum Studies in Motion blog. Here is an excerpt:

“Hands-on access also developed my visual vocabulary for late 19th and early 20th century clothing, the various issues with their conditions, their storage requirements, and other special needs. Throughout the internship, I contributed to other collections management functions, too. I helped research selections from the historic dress collection so we could more precisely date costume pieces. I also learned about the Mimsy XG database and the preparation and organization of digital images for both internal and external use. Learning a little about the Henry’s methods for condition reporting, storing flat textiles, and its accession process was also a focus during the summer.”

Read the rest of the post here!

Bear Hug

This Sunday, the Henry is hosting an afternoon of camaraderie as we gather to celebrate Seattle’s BFF, Jeffry Mitchell, on the occasion of the exhibition, Like a Valentine. The afternoon will feature tours led by friends of Jeffry at 2pm followed by an afternoon reception and chainsaw bear sale. Choose from a selection of handcrafted chainsaw bears selected by Jeffry and Claude Zervas from locations around the Olympic Peninsula.

Sunday, December 9
1:00 – 3:00 PM
Molly’s Cafe & Sculpture Court
FREE for Henry Members, Students, and UW Staff & Faculty
$10 General Audience

In conjunction with Like a Valentine: The Art of Jeffry Mitchell,  Favorite Art Projects has created a Popup Shop in the Henry with art from Northwest artists inspired by Jeffry Mitchell.

The physical shop is open Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday: 12 to 4
Thursday and Fri: 12 to 8
The virtual shop is always open.

Spontaneous Haiku inspired by Bear Hug:

animal inside
the articulate chainsaw
bear hug, bear hug. YES!

And a little diddy, sung to the tone of “Reading Rainbow”:

Bear Hug,
All of the hugs,
Bear hug.

The Henry receives NEA grant

National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) Chairman Rocco Landesman announced today that the Henry is one of 832 non-profit organizations nationwide to receive an NEA Art Works grant. The Henry was awarded a $20,000 grant to support the upcoming exhibition Out [o] Fashion Photography: Embracing Beauty to be presented March 2 – July 7, 2013. The exhibition is curated by Dr. Deborah Willis, Chair and Professor of Photography and Imaging at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. Out [o] Fashion will present over 90 photographs that examine historic and contemporary representations of beauty. The exhibition will include works by renowned artists Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, E. J. Bellocq, Marsha Burns, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Curtis, Bruce Davidson, Fred Miller, Hope Sandrow, Cindy Sherman, Lorna Simpson, Andy Warhol, Weegee, Carrie Mae Weems, and Garry Winogrand.

“I’m proud to announce these 832 grants to the American public including the Henry Art Gallery,” said Chairman Landesman. “These projects offer extraordinary examples of creativity in our country, including the creation of new work, innovative ways of engaging audiences, and exemplary education programs.”

In March 2012, the NEA received 1,509 eligible applications for Art Works requesting more than $74 million in funding. The 832 recommended NEA grants total $22.3 million, span 13 artistic disciplines and fields, and focus primarily on the creation of work and presentation of both new and existing works for the benefit of American audiences. Applications were reviewed by panels of outside experts convened by NEA staff and each project was judged on its artistic excellence and artistic merit.

A complete listing of projects recommended for Art Works grant support may be found at the NEA website at arts.gov.

Faculty Focus: Claire Cowie

Come to the Henry tomorrow for this month’s Focus Tour! The 30 minute tour will be led by UW School of Art faculty and artist Claire Cowie who will guide visitors through Like a Valentine: The Art of Jeffry Mitchell. The tour starts at 12 and will leave you with enough time to grab a sammy at Molly’s all within your lunch hour!

From painting to sculpture to photogravure, the work produced by Seattle-based artist Claire Cowie conjures up a bizarre menagerie, replete with composite creatures and exotic locales. Haunting disembodied figures populate her landscapes; they appear at once otherworldly and familiar as they beckon the eye and the imagination. Her collages, watercolors, and prints recall Chinese and Japanese landscape painting traditions. Using a minimum of strokes she achieves deep spaces, producing dreamlike landscapes that recede into the distance. Claire received her BFA in Drawing and Printmaking from Washington University in St. Louis in 1997, and her MFA in Printmaking from the University of Washington in 1999. She is locally represented by James Harris Gallery.

In summary:
Claire Cowie Faculty Tour of Like a Valentine: The Art of Jeffry Mitchell
wednesday (november 21) at 12:00 – 12:30
Henry Art Gallery

See you there!