PRESS RELEASE – This summer, 21c Museum in Louisville will present two simultaneous exhibitions to run through January 2013. Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites will introduce the exhibitions with a tour of the Museum on August 3rd at 6:30pm during the First Friday Trolley Hop.
Blue: Matter, Mood, and Melancholy will feature more than 30 works by artists from North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia which illuminate the chromatic, sensory, and psychological effects of the color blue. Cited as a favorite hue by over half the population, blue incites joy and sadness, wonder and nostalgia, vitality and illness, nature and science. While this spectrum of meaning and effect embraces broad polarities, longing and transformation consistently attend these artists’ exploration of mood and hue.
Convergence: Highlights from the Collection 2012 captures the breadth, depth, and diversity of how everyday life informs art today. Featuring new acquisitions to the 21c Museum Collection, this exhibition will explore how we perceive ourselves and others in a fast-paced, intricately connected—yet often disconnected—global community. Convergence: Highlights from the Collection 2012 will include painting, sculpture, photography, and video works from over 20 international artists.
Works by Kentucky artists Gaela Erwin, Lauren Argo, and Ross Gordon will be on view in these new exhibitions, alongside works by internationally acclaimed artists, including Ragnar Kjartansson, Slater Bradley, Zhan Huang, Lalla Essaydi, Patricia Piccinini, Gottfried Helnwein, Dinh Q Le, and others.
Blue: Matter, Mood, and Melancholy and Convergence: Highlights from the Collection 2012 will be on view from August 3rd 2012 through January 2013. Both exhibitions are curated by Alice Gray Stites, Chief Curator of 21c Museum. Also currently on view at 21c is Consuming Cultures: A Global View, a multi-media group exhibition installed in Proof on Main restaurant.
About 21c Museum
21c Museum is North America’s first museum dedicated solely to collecting and exhibiting art of the 21st century. The 9,000-square-foot Museum, part of 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville, was opened in 2006, and is committed to bringing works of art to the public through innovative exhibitions and programs that integrate contemporary art into daily life. Additionally, 21c Museum presents a variety of cultural programming, including a monthly poetry series, artist lectures, film screenings, and music performances. 21c Museum is open free of charge 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Exhibitions
More than than 35 exhibitions have been featured at 21c Museum since opening. Recent exhibitions organized by 21c Museum include Alter Ego: A Decade of Work by Anthony Goicolea, (organized in conjunction with the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, and Telfair Museums, Savannah); Cuba Now; Simen Johan: Until the Kingdom Comes; Creating Identity: Portraits Today; All’s Fair in Art and War: Envisioning Conflict; Tangled Up In You: Connecting, Coexisting, and Conceiving Identity; and Hybridity: The Evolution of Species and Spaces in 21st-Century Art. 21c Museum has presented special projects by Mikhail Baryshnikov and John Waters, as well as traveling exhibitions, including Marc Swanson: Beginning to See the Light, organized by the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum, and Constant World: the Work of Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, organized by Beall Center for Art and Technology, University of California, Irvine.
21c Museum features permanent installations and special exhibitions of works by both emerging and established artists, including Bill Viola, Tony Oursler, Mikhael Subotzky, Sam Taylor-Wood, Kehinde Wiley, Jennifer Steinkamp, Yinka Shonibare, Anthony Goicolea, Mickelene Thomas, Chuck Close, Ann Hamilton, Miguel Angel Rojas, Alfredo Jaar, Kenneth Tin Kin Hung, and Kara Walker. 21c also actively supports regional artists with new commissions, exhibitions, and programs.
Commissions
21c Museum has a number of original commissions on long-term display, including Serkan Ozkaya’s David (Inspired by Michelangelo). Other commissions include: Wheel of Fortune by Anne Peabody, In the Absence of Voyeurism 6 & 7 by artist and surgeon Sean Bidic; MacArthur Fellow Ned Kahn’s Cloud Rings; MacArthur Fellow Camille Utterback and Romy Achituv’s Text Rain; and two untitled ceiling light sculptures by Chilean artist Ivan Navarro, the artist’s first commissioned project for a public space.
Beyond 21c Museum
With the generous aid of private collectors and founders of 21c Museum, Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, 21c has been able to share its collection with the international art community. It is the mission of 21c to promote contemporary art for all audiences, and to further this endeavor through relationships with other innovative cultural institutions. 21c Museum has collaborated with and loaned works to The North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; The Denver Art Museum; The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art,; The Cincinnati Art Museum,; Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; The Museum of Arts and Design, New York; The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati; The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, and many others.
For press information contact:
Biz Ruby
21c Museum Hotels
502.807.2323
bruby@21cHotels.com
