PUBLIC SCULPTURE

Kwadwo "Kojo" Owusu-Akyaw, The Eternal Double Helix, 2010.

Kwadwo "Kojo" Owusu-Akyaw, a senior Evolutionary Anthropology and Chemistry major, who will be attending Duke Medical School beginning in the fall, recently installed a large public sculpture on the West Campus Plaza in front of the Bryan Center. Created with funds provided by the Office of Undergraduate Research Support in conjunction with an Independent Study with William Noland, associate professor of the practice of visual arts, the sculpture will remain on display through the calendar year through the efforts of Vice Provost for the Arts Scott Lindroth and Vice President for Student Affairs Larry Moneta. 

Titled The Eternal Double Helix, the large, brightly colored steel sculpture departs from standard depictions of the double helix that represent it as relatively uniform and upright. Seeking to create a more dynamic representation in order to capture its functional role in life processes, Owusu-Akyaw created a form that stands more than eight feel tall, simplifying the base pairs for aesthetic purposes and creating two freely interlocking helices to suggest the process of replication, a key part of procreation. 

Owusu-Akyaw says in his project statement: "Too often the fields of biological science and visual arts are considered polar opposites. The truth of the matter is that many elements of biology are stunningly beautiful when depicted through art. DNA is no exception to this."
 

2010 SENIOR DISTINCTION EXHIBITION + SENIOR CAPSTONE EXHIBITION

April 29 – May 18, 2010
Smith Warehouse, Bays 11-12
114 S. Buchanan Blvd.

Graduating seniors Sue Li, Allison Simler, Taylor Martyn, and Umberto Plaja will be exhibiting their Senior Distinction projects.

FACULTY MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION IN DUKE LINK

Passage Sets/One Pulls Pivots at the Tip of the Tongue
(Wall of Light Version)

Interactive work by Bill Seaman
Programming by Todd Berreth
Location: Mediawall, The LINK @ Perkins Library (lower level)

Passage Sets by Bill Seaman, professor of visual studies, is a generative visual poem. It includes an interactive poem generator. The users of the system can position themselves in front of the screen and select words and/or phrases from four lists that become visual as they enter into differing proximities in relation to the screens. Moving forward and/or backward, then stopping in the center of the field, enables the participants to make selections from specific lists authored by Seaman. These words then flow across the screen and become part of an ever-changing line of text at the bottom of the screen.

The original version of Passage Sets/One Pulls Pivots at The Tip Of The Tongue was premiered in 1995. That version has been shown internationally and is in the permanent collection of the ZKM Museum (Center for Art and Media), Karlsruhe, Germany. This exhibition is displayed on the LINK Mediawall, a large tiled-display, composed of 48 computer monitors driven by a Linux computing cluster. Control for the exhibition is provided by an array of cameras mounted on the ceiling in front of the exhibit.

EAST DUKE CORRIDOR GALLERY INSTALLATION

 
Merrill Shatzman, ART poem, 24" x 30", digital print.

A new multimedia installation by artists Raquel Salvatella de Prada and Merrill Shatzman (Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies) and poet Deborah Pope (Department of English) is on view in the East Duke Building Corridor Gallery on Duke’s East Campus.

Supported by a Council for the Arts Collaboration Development Grant and the Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies, this multi-faceted project displays the collaborative work of these Duke professors in exploring the interactive relationship between original visual artwork with original creative text. The installation features the poetry of Pope, the letterforms and digital prints of Shatzman, and the animation of Salvatella de Prada, highlighting the potential of digital media in translating the written word. 

Raquel Salvatella de Prada, stlll frame from ART poem video.

The resulting exhibition, ART, reflects the artists’ own interactive, interdisciplinary, individual, and collective dynamic, aspiring to simultaneously enact and celebrate the essence and process of creating itself:  Art in all its rhythms of paradox, play, persistence, its rough turns and joys; its restless circling, transcendent moments of ephemeral poise, and ceaseless seeking.

For further information please go to: http://www.dukevisualstudies.org/letters

2010 Art, Art History & Visual Studies Undergraduate Awards

The Mary Duke Biddle Foundation Visual Arts Award
•Allison Simler
•Rebecca Wood 

The Nancy Kaneb Art History Award
•Margaret Morrison
•Caroline Schermer

The Sue and Lee Noel Prize in Visual Arts Award
•Umberto Plaja
•Taylor Martyn

Visual Studies Initiative Award
•Mycah Braxton
•Michelle Rose Sullivan

2009-2010 Art History Doctorates

Samantha Noel
Advisor: Richard Powell
Dissertation: "Carnival is Woman: Gender, Performance, and Visual Culture in Contemporary Trinidad Carnival"

Faculty Lecture at the British Archaeological Association

Caroline Bruzelius, Ann M. Cogan Professor of art history, presented a lecture to the British Archaeological Association on May 5.  The title of the lecture was "Stiffs and Stones: Brothers, Burials and Bodies in the Medieval City."

Faculty Artwork in ColorPrint USA 40th Anniversary Exhibition

Bill Fick, Yummy No.3, 2004, 37” x 25”, color reduction linocut 

A color reduction linocut print titled Yummy No.3 by Bill Fick, visiting assistant professor of the practice of visual art, is currently on view at The Museum of Texas Tech University as part of the ColorPrint USA 40th Anniversary exhibition.

As noted on the museum’s website: “For four decades ColorPrint USA exhibitions gathered together exemplary cross-sections of fine art prints. Through the foresight and creative direction of retired Texas Tech art professor Lynwood Kreneck, these sometimes annual, sometimes biennial, and sometimes triennial showcases of contemporary art brought to West Texas many of the most persuasive, famous, and compelling creative efforts of American and, at times, European, printmakers. The Museum of Texas Tech University now houses the ColorPrint USA collection. Through 65 works curated from this collection, this exhibition celebrates and refocuses attention on the singular importance of ColorPrint’s 40 year history.”

Faculty Lecture at Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels

Willem van der Vliet (attr), The Money Counter, 64 x 51 cm. Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium.

Hans van Miegroet, professor of art history and chair, gave the keynote lecture at the academic conference in conjunction with the opening of the exhibition, Art and Finance in Europe: 17^th Century Masterworks in a New Light, at the Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels on April 28. Van Miegroet’s lecture was titled, “Art and Finance on the 17^th Century Art Market.”

Exhibition at the Musees royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, for the European Association of Public Banks. Left: Miriam Roemers, public relations manager, European Association of Public Banks. Middle: Henning Schoppman, secretary general, European Union Association of Public Banks. Right: Hans van Miegroet, professor and chair, Department of Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Duke University.

“Duke Office Hours”

Neil McWilliam, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of art history, discussed the history of political caricature and the Lines of Attack exhibition at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke in an online "Office Hours" interview on April 16.

The full recorded version is available at: http://ondemand.duke.edu/video/21774/neil-mcwilliam-history-of-poli

Faculty Lecture at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Theresa Musoke [Uganda, b. 1942], Evolution, c. 1975

Ai Wei Wei [China, b. 1957] Marble Chair, 2008 

Kristine Stiles, professor of art history, delivered the Sylvia Druy Lecture on the topic of “World Art and Contemporary Art at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts,” Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, May 6, 2010. The lecture coincided with the opening of the exhibition, Until Now: Collecting the New (1960-2010), the inaugural exhibition by MIA’s newly appointed contemporary art curator, Elizabeth Armstrong.

 
Graduate Student Participates on InMediaRes

Graduate student Karen Gonzalez Rice presented "Linda Montano, Student of Real Presence” on April 16, 2010, as part of a week of religion-themed postings on the collaborative, scholarly site, InMediaRes.

For her presentation please see: 

http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/imr/2010/04/15/linda-montano-student-real-presence#comment-1851

Franklin Humanities Institute Dissertation Working Groups

VISUAL STUDIES INITIATIVE

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