L. Kent Wolgamott: Art comings and goings
digg it!
Facebook
del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit
Former Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery director Janice Driesbach has been named director and chief executive officer of the Dayton Art Institute and will begin work there in early January.
Driesbach, who left Sheldon in September after seven years as director, impressed the Dayton search committee with her passion for and knowledge of art as well as her ability to work with the community, according to a DAI news release.
“Jan impressed us as a sincere person who would be easy to work with and who was very comfortable with The Dayton Art Institute and the Dayton community,” Joseph Zehenny, DAI Board of Trustees search committee chair, said in the news release.
“The people we talked with described Jan as a dedicated professional of high integrity who has been an effective collaborator and fundraiser within the Lincoln community. Jan helped make the Sheldon more welcoming to the citizens of Lincoln and also created programs for both today’s art lover as well as tomorrow’s art lover. The search committee felt that Jan would be the right person to build on The Dayton Art Institute’s past success and take it to the next level.”
The DAI is a well-regarded mid-sized encyclopedic museum. Established in 1919, the museum moved into its Italian Renaissance building overlooking downtown Dayton in 1930.
The DAI collection contains about 20,000 works of art that date back to 5,000 years and includes examples of art from around the globe. In contrast, the Sheldon’s collection of more than 10,000 objects is nearly exclusively American art and dates from the 18th century to the present.
At Sheldon, Driesbach managed a $5.1 million rehabilitation of the Philip Johnson-designed building, bringing its heating-and-air-conditioning system up to museum standards and refurbishing the galleries. That rehabilitation was part of a successful effort to gain reaccreditation from the American Association of Museums.
Driesbach also was responsible for securing a $1 million endowment to support exhibitions and programs and, along with former curator Daniel Siedell, revived the biennial contemporary art invitational exhibitions from which art work is purchased for the collection. The 2007 “Sheldon Survey” is now on view at the museum, and one piece has been purchased.
Among the notable acquisitions by Driesbach are “Breach,”Roxy Paine’s stainless steel “tree” located near Andrews Hall on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln city campus, Martin Puryear’s sculpture “Nightmare” and “Born to Raise Hell,” Robert Arneson’s ceramic mask depicting Jackson Pollock.
When she announced her resignation from Sheldon, Driesbach said she hoped to relocate close to her aging mother, who lives in Cleveland.
Quilt museum to open in March
The grand opening of the new museum of the International Quilt Study Center will be held March 30 from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m.
The glass and brick building at 33rd and Holdrege streets, designed by the internationally renowned Robert A.M. Stern Architects of New York, will house the world’s largest collection of more than 2,300 quilts and an international study center dedicated to the research, preservation and display of important quilts from cultures around the world.
The three-story, 37,000-square-foot museum features a bowed façade of glass panels “stitched together” to create a large-scale pattern. It will contain public galleries and meeting spaces, work areas dedicated to research, and climate-controlled storage areas for the center’s expanding collection.
Inside, a curved, stepped ramp runs the length of the east façade, leading visitors to the dramatically shaped second floor reception hall — a light-filled space overlooking the landscaped plaza that provides access to the three interconnected galleries.
The $12 million building is privately funded through contributions to the University of Nebraska Foundation, including a lead gift from the Robert and Ardis James Foundation of Chappaqua, N.Y.
The Jameses’ 1997 donation of their collection of nearly 950 quilts lead to the founding of the IQSC. It has since become the largest public quilt collection of its kind. It now holds more than 2,300 quilts. The collection was last valued at between $8 million and $9 million.
‘Last Year on the Farm' to open at Great Plains
An addendum to last week’s look ahead at area museum shows:
On Jan. 2, the Great Plains Art Museum will open “Last Year on the Farm,” an exhibition of plein air paintings by Texas artist V.... Vaughan documenting the last days on her family’s farm. Plein air paintings are done in the “open air” or outside rather than in a studio.
Vaughan lived and painted on the farm northeast of Austin for 30 years. But, like much of the land around the growing capital city, it was sold for development. Her 365 plein air paintings, done each day in the year before leaving the farm, document the seasonal changes on the 200 acres of land in its final year as a farm.
The yearlong series of paintings also includes “24-in-24” — in which she did 24 paintings in 24 hours.
"One of my goals for all these little paintings is to draw attention to small-time farming as a great (and) honorable way of life," Vaughn said in a news release.
The Great Plains Art Museum in Hewit Place, 1155 Q St., will be one of the first venues to show “Last Year on the Farm.”
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.
Post Your Comment
Standards and RulesYour posted comment will appear after it has been approved.
Frequently asked questions about story commenting.