In the Search of an Absolute: Art of Valery Yurlov

Dodge Gallery
Dec 03, 2011 - Jun 03, 2012

This exhibition continues a series of one-man shows devoted to early nonconformist artists. The art of Valery Yurlov (born 1932) stands out as one of the earliest examples of geometric analytical abstraction within Soviet nonconformist art. Yurlov never was a member of any art movements or groups, and stayed beyond the confines of politics, not once yielding to the temptation of using ideology in his art. Yurlov’s creativity developed in direct communion with his teachers, the artists Vladimir Favorsky and Petr Miturich, and his long-term friend, the philosopher and theoretician Victor Shklovsky. All of them carried within themselves the ideology and traditions of the avant-garde of the 1920s. In Yurlov’s work this tradition manifested itself in the search for an absolute, for an expressive visual sign, built in accordance with universal principles of construction of a visual form. Throughout his artistic career, Yurlov combined this principle with the latest developments and theories in contemporary art, such as neo-constructivism, structuralism, impermanence, and performance art.

Admission:
$6 for adults who are not members. $5 for citizens over 65. Members, children under 18, Rutgers University students, faculty, and staff with a valid I.D. enjoy free admission. Free admission for all visitors on the first Sunday of every month.

Museum Hours:

Popcorn & Starbaby: Children’s Book Illustrations by Frank Asch

Duvoisin Gallery
Jul 02, 2011 - Jun 24, 2012

Popcorn and Starbaby, two captivating series of original children’s book illustrations by Frank Asch, are featured in this exhibition designed to appeal to viewers of all ages. An early Frank Asch “Bear Book,” Popcorn (1979) is about Sam Bear hosting an impromptu Halloween party when his parents are out. The amusing nineteen illustrations show Sam and his young friends popping popcorn in a very large pot. Then, there is too much popcorn, which keeps on popping. Much to Sam’s alarm, popcorn soon fills the entire house! The rest of the story shows how Sam and his friends clean up the mess and depart before Sam’s parents return.

Also on view are fifteen original illustrations for Starbaby (1980), a delightful bedtime story about a boy who lives in the sky. After Starbaby falls to Earth, he lives among the fish in the ocean until he caught by a fisherman, who brings the little boy home to his wife. Various scenes then present Starbaby enjoying daily activities with his new doting parents.

Frank Asch is a noted author and illustrator of over sixty-five children’s books, poetry, juvenile non-fiction and children’s novels. Born in Somerville, New Jersey, Asch attended Rutgers University before obtaining a B.F.A. degree from Cooper Union, New York, in 1969 – the same year he published his first children’s book, George’s Store. He currently resides in Vermont and Hawaii.

This exhibition features a donation by the artist to the Zimmerli Art Museum’s collection of original illustrations for children’s literature. It was organized by Marilyn Symmes, Director of the Zimmerli’s Morse Research Center for Graphic Arts and Curator of Prints and Drawings.

Admission:
$6 for adults who are not members. $5 for citizens over 65. Members, children under 18, Rutgers University students, faculty, and staff with a valid I.D. enjoy free admission. Free admission for all visitors on the first Sunday of every month.

Museum Hours:

Fluxus at Rutgers: Experiments in Life and Learning

Eisenberg Gallery
Sep 24, 2011 - Apr 01, 2012

Fluxus celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2012. A radical, experimental, and multimedia art movement of the mid-twentieth century that continues to influence contemporary art, Fluxus focuses on the unpredictable, ordinary, and ephemeral moments of everyday life. Rutgers University was an important center of Fluxus activity in the early 1960s and 1970s and key members of the Fluxus group worked at Rutgers and lived in and around New Brunswick. This exhibition focuses on the university’s legacy as a center of experimental art. The works on view include publications, games, and objects by the Fluxus Collective under the leadership of George Maciunas, as well as concentrations of works by Fluxus artists at Rutgers, including Geoffrey Hendricks and Robert Watts who were long-time faculty members, Larry Miller, who was a student of Watts, and George Brecht, who although not affiliated directly with the art department was an important presence at Rutgers and a key early figure in Fluxus.

Because performance was and remains an essential aspect of Fluxus attitudes to life and art, the exhibition includes photographs, films, recordings of music, and documents of Fluxus events that occurred on campus in the 1960s to 1970s. The exhibition also includes an interactive game room open at specified times to allow visitors to the exhibition to participate directly in Fluxus games and performances inside the gallery. A Fluxus concert organized by Larry Miller and Rutgers students is scheduled for November of 2011.

Fluxus at Rutgers runs concurrently with a nationally touring exhibition titled, Fluxus: The Essential Questions of Life, that will be on view at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University in the fall of 2011. In conjunction with the exhibition at the Zimmerli Art Museum, the University is offering a Byrne Seminar titled “Artists, Musicians and Poets in the Museum” taught by Donna Gustafson and Gerry Beegan, Undergraduate Director for Mason Gross School of the Arts.

The exhibition is organized by Donna Gustafson, Andrew W. Mellon Liaison for Academic Programs and Curator and Eveline Baseggio Omiccioli, Graduate Assistant, Zimmerli Art Museum.

Admission:
$6 for adults who are not members. $5 for citizens over 65. Members, children under 18, Rutgers University students, faculty, and staff with a valid I.D. enjoy free admission. Free admission for all visitors on the first Sunday of every month.

Museum Hours:

Rachel Perry Welty: 24/7

Voorhees Special Exhibition Gallery
Jan 28, 2012 - Jul 01, 2012

Rachel Perry Welty is a Boston-based conceptual artist who creates humorous, beautifully crafted, process-based work on the subject of life in the twenty-first century. Addressing issues that include consumerism and the cycle of purchasing, collecting and eventual purging, as well as social networking, information overload, narcissism, language and time, she uses fruit stickers, restaurant take-out containers, messages left on her answering machine, medical records, toys, and email spam as materials for her art. By drawing attention to what she describes as the "business of living" – the unremarked and insignificant moments, detritus, and every day materials of our lives – Welty reminds us to look at what we overlook and to pay attention to the momentary.

Marking the artist's first large-scale solo museum presentation, the exhibition includes drawing, sculpture, collage, installation, video, photography, and performance works using iPhones, Facebook and Twitter. Rachel Is, her online performance of March 11, 2009, in which she documented her activity every waking minute in one 24- hour period and her acclaimed Karaoke Wrong Number (collection Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston), a video of the artist lip-synching the voices of strangers who mistakenly left messages on her answering machine, are both included in this 10-year survey. Her interactive Twitter piece is ongoing throughout the run of the exhibition at the Zimmerli. De-accession, the verb used by museums to described the process by which they cull works of art from their permanent collection, is the title of another ongoing, installation at the museum documenting the removal (through discarding, donation, gifting, selling or recycling) of one object from her own possession each day beginning on October 5, 2005. Large scale photographs of performative work, site-specific sculptures using fruit stickers, twist ties, and aluminum foil, and a series of collages referencing the ubiquitous music that plays around us as we do errands and aptly titled Soundtrack to My Life are also included.

The exhibition is accompanied by an artist's book with essays by Nick Capasso and Stephen Merriam Foley, and a cell-phone audio tour conducted by the artist.

Rachel Perry Welty: 24/7 was organized by Nick Capasso, Deputy Director for Curatorial Affairs and Lexi Lee Sullivan, Koch Curatorial Fellow, the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. The presentation at the Zimmerli is organized by Donna Gustafson, Andrew W. Mellon Liaison for Academic Programs and Curator.

Admission:
$6 for adults who are not members. $5 for citizens over 65. Members, children under 18, Rutgers University students, faculty, and staff with a valid I.D. enjoy free admission. Free admission for all visitors on the first Sunday of every month.

Museum Hours:

at/around/beyond:
Fluxus at Rutgers

Eisenberg Gallery
Sep 24, 2011 - Apr 01, 2012

Fluxus celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2012. A radical, experimental, and multimedia art movement of the mid-twentieth century that continues to influence contemporary art, Fluxus focuses on the unpredictable, ordinary, and ephemeral moments of everyday life. Rutgers University was an important center of Fluxus activity in the early 1960s and 1970s and key members of the Fluxus group worked at Rutgers and lived in and around New Brunswick. This exhibition focuses on the university’s legacy as a center of experimental art. The works on view include publications, games, and objects by the Fluxus Collective under the leadership of George Maciunas, as well as concentrations of works by Fluxus artists at Rutgers, including Geoffrey Hendricks and Robert Watts who were long-time faculty members, Larry Miller, who was a student of Watts, and George Brecht, who although not affiliated directly with the art department was an important presence at Rutgers and a key early figure in Fluxus.

Because performance was and remains an essential aspect of Fluxus attitudes to life and art, the exhibition includes photographs, films, recordings of music, and documents of Fluxus events that occurred on campus in the 1960s to 1970s. The exhibition also includes an interactive game room open at specified times to allow visitors to the exhibition to participate directly in Fluxus games and performances inside the gallery. A Fluxus concert organized by Larry Miller and Rutgers students is scheduled for November of 2011.

Fluxus at Rutgers runs concurrently with a nationally touring exhibition titled, Fluxus: The Essential Questions of Life, on view at the Grey Art Gallery at New York University in the fall of 2011. In conjunction with the exhibition at the Zimmerli Art Museum, the University is offering a Byrne Seminar titled Artists, Musicians, and Poets in the Museum taught by Donna Gustafson and Gerry Beegan, Undergraduate Director for Mason Gross School of the Arts.

The exhibition is organized by Donna Gustafson, Andrew W. Mellon Liaison for Academic Programs and Curator and Eveline Baseggio Omiccioli, Graduate Assistant, Zimmerli Art Museum.

Admission:
$6 for adults who are not members. $5 for citizens over 65. Members, children under 18, Rutgers University students, faculty, and staff with a valid I.D. enjoy free admission. Free admission for all visitors on the first Sunday of every month.

Museum Hours:

In the Search of an Absolute:
Art of Valery Yurlov

Eisenberg Gallery
Sep 24, 2011 - Apr 01, 2012

This exhibition continues a series of one-man shows devoted to early nonconformist artists. The art of Valery Yurlov (born 1932) stands out as one of the earliest examples of geometric analytical abstraction within Soviet nonconformist art. Yurlov never was a member of any art movements or groups, and stayed beyond the confines of politics, not once yielding to the temptation of using ideology in his art. Yurlov’s creativity developed in direct communion with his teachers, the artists Vladimir Favorsky and Petr Miturich, and his long-term friend, the philosopher and theoretician Victor Shklovsky. All of them carried within themselves the ideology and traditions of the avant-garde of the 1920s. In Yurlov’s work this tradition manifested itself in the search for an absolute, for an expressive visual sign, built in accordance with universal principles of construction of a visual form. Throughout his artistic career, Yurlov combined this principle with the latest developments and theories in contemporary art, such as neo-constructivism, structuralism, impermanence, and performance art.

Admission:
$6 for adults who are not members. $5 for citizens over 65. Members, children under 18, Rutgers University students, faculty, and staff with a valid I.D. enjoy free admission. Free admission for all visitors on the first Sunday of every month.

Museum Hours:

Red

January 31, 2012 - February 26, 2012

By Academy Award nominee John Logan
Directed by Anders Cato

In 1958, abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko had just landed the biggest commission in the history of modern art -- a series of murals for New York’s famed Four Seasons Restaurant. In the two fascinating years that followed, Rothko worked feverishly with his young assistant, Ken, in his studio on the Bowery. But when the assistant gains the confidence to challenge the master, Rothko must face the agonizing possibility that his crowning achievement could also become his undoing.

A huge hit both in London and on Broadway, this provocative play won six Tony Awards, including Best Play.

Under the leadership of Artistic Director David Saint and Managing Director Norma Kaplan, George Street Playhouse is a nationally recognized theatre, presenting an acclaimed mainstage season while providing an artistic home for established and emerging theatre artists. Founded in 1974, the Playhouse has been represented by numerous productions both on and Off Broadway – recent productions include Anne Meara's Down the Garden Paths, the Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and Drama League nominated production of The Spitfire Grill and the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning play Proof by David Auburn which was developed at GSP during the 1999 Next Stage Series of new plays. In addition to its mainstage season, GSP's Touring Theatre features five issue-oriented productions that tours to more than 250 schools in the tri-state area, and are seen by more than 80,000 students annually.

George Street Playhouse programming is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.

In Bed with the Blues: The Adventures of Fishy Waters

February 16th - February 26th
Storyteller and blues singer/guitar player Guy Davis returns to the Crossroads stage in his original one-man show. Through song and storytelling, the life and adventures of fictional blues man Fishy Waters and his travels through rugged America. Guy Davis was last seen at Crossroads with his parents Ruby Dee and the late Ossie Davis in the original work, Two Ha Ha’s and a Homeboy.

The Adventures of Fishy Waters: In Bed with the Blues

February 16th - February 26th

Written and Performed by GUY DAVIS
directed by RICARDO KHAN

Storyteller and blues singer/guitar player Guy Davis returns to the Crossroads stage in his original one-man show. Through song and storytelling, the life and adventures of fictional blues man Fishy Waters and his travels through rugged America. Guy Davis was last seen at Crossroads with his parents Ruby Dee and the late Ossie Davis in the original work, Two Ha Ha’s and a Homeboy.

Red

January 31, 2012 - February 26, 2012

By Academy Award nominee John Logan
Directed by Anders Cato

In 1958, abstract expressionist painter Mark Rothko had just landed the biggest commission in the history of modern art -- a series of murals for New York’s famed Four Seasons Restaurant. In the two fascinating years that followed, Rothko worked feverishly with his young assistant, Ken, in his studio on the Bowery. But when the assistant gains the confidence to challenge the master, Rothko must face the agonizing possibility that his crowning achievement could also become his undoing.

A huge hit both in London and on Broadway, this provocative play won six Tony Awards, including Best Play.

Under the leadership of Artistic Director David Saint and Managing Director Norma Kaplan, George Street Playhouse is a nationally recognized theatre, presenting an acclaimed mainstage season while providing an artistic home for established and emerging theatre artists. Founded in 1974, the Playhouse has been represented by numerous productions both on and Off Broadway – recent productions include Anne Meara's Down the Garden Paths, the Outer Critics Circle, Drama Desk and Drama League nominated production of The Spitfire Grill and the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winning play Proof by David Auburn which was developed at GSP during the 1999 Next Stage Series of new plays. In addition to its mainstage season, GSP's Touring Theatre features five issue-oriented productions that tours to more than 250 schools in the tri-state area, and are seen by more than 80,000 students annually.

George Street Playhouse programming is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.