Bring your friends and family and enjoy PNC Free Sundays at Columbus Museum of Art. Be inspired by current exhibitions such as The Sun Placed in the Abyss,Bodies@Work: The Work of Ruben and Isabel Toledo,Aminah’s Presidential Suite, and Ronald Wimberly Graphic Novelist Exhibition. Explore the new Walter Wing, play in the Wonder Room, or build a puzzle together in a gallery. Then share your memories with us using hashtags #PNCFreeSundays and #myCMA.
Throughout 2016, PNC is providing support for the Columbus Museum of Art’s Free Sundays through the PNC Foundation. A grant from the PNC Arts Alive initiative provides free general admission for museum visitors, each and every Sunday. PNC Free Sundays increase accessibility for all residents of Central Ohio, regardless of their ability to pay. We are pleased to be able to continue this gift to the community through the support of PNC.
On Thursday 13 October, the sixth annual Marsh Awards for Excellence in Gallery Education celebrated the hard work, dedication and innovation of colleagues working within the sector of gallery, museum and visual arts education. The awards are funded by the Marsh Christian Trust and run by engage, the support and advocacy organization for gallery education, whose mission is to increase access to the visual arts.
Chief Engagement Officer Merilee Mostove was one of 5 individuals to receive the prestigious Marsh Award for Gallery Education.
CMA’s Chief Engagement Officer Merilee Mostov was one of five individuals who received awards, presented by Professor Roderick Bugg, Ambassador of the Marsh Christian Trust, and Lesley Butterworth, Chair of engage, during the annual engage International Conference in Liverpool. The awards are open to those working in galleries and visual arts organizations, and colleagues are invited to nominate deserving co-workers every summer. The winners receive £500 to spend on their professional development, and are open to both UK and international colleagues. Feedback from previous winners has been overwhelmingly positive – they have been delighted to receive recognition for their work and have reported increased confidence and opportunities as a result of winning the award, as well as, benefits for the organizations where they worked.
“This is the sixth year that engage has celebrated the achievements of colleagues through the Marsh Awards for Excellence in Gallery Education. As ever the panel were extremely impressed by the quality of nominations received from individuals at all stages of their careers, working as freelancers and employees across the UK and internationally. We are proud to work with the Marsh Christian Trust to mark the valuable contribution made by colleagues in making the visual arts more accessible,” said Jane Sillis, Director of Engage in the Visual Arts.
As Chief Engagement Officer at the Columbus Museum of Art, Merilee Mostov leads the museum exhibition planning process, as well as, developing a diverse range of in-gallery experiences. She also curates several experimental galleries within the museum, including The Wonder Room, the Big Idea Gallery and the Creative Lounge. Mostov was nominated by Deputy Director of Learning and Experience, Cindy Meyers Foley. “Merilee developed our strategy for Visitor Engagement by rallying an interdepartmental team, prototyping ideas, and researching the results. She developed an outcomes-based exhibition form to ensure that we are not only intentional about learning outcomes but are also providing opportunities for visitors to “think like artists. Merilee’s work has had an incredible impact on our community.” said Foley.
Exhibitions are in and of themselves creative acts. The Picasso exhibition is an original exhibition organized by Columbus Museum of Art and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. You bring these great works of art from all over the world, in this case London, Paris, New York, Zurich… and they live together for a brief period of time before they go back to their homes.
Only a few more days to see the Picasso exhibition in Columbus before it closes September 11, 2016. We’ve extended hours on Friday September 9 and Sunday September 11 until 9pm, with hours on Saturday September 10 from 10am – 5:00pm.
Once gain we’re partnering to present the 2016 LEGO Design Challenge: 50 Years Past, 50 Years Future. 2016 marks the 50th anniversary of the National Historic Preservation Act which works to preserve important places all across America. The 2016 LEGO Design Challenge is to create a structure based off of something built 50 years ago, or what you think buildings might look like 50 years from now.
Selected LEGO Design Challenge Winners On View
Ohio History Center: Nov. 9, 2016 – Jan. 15, 2017
Columbus Museum of Art: Nov. 11, 2016 – Feb 26, 2017
Ohio Statehouse: Nov. 23, 2016 – Jan 30, 2017
Peggy R. McConnell Arts Center: Jan 5 – March 5, 2017
The 2016 LEGO Design Challenge is partnership between the Ohio History Connection, Columbus Museum of Art, the Ohio Statehouse, and the Peggy R. McConnell Center of Worthington.
CMA is pleased to announce two new acquisitions, made possible by The Contemporaries. The Contemporaries is a special membership group at the Museum who share an interest in contemporary art and vote to select a new work of art for the collection each year. In honor of their 10th anniversary, the group chose to support the purchase of two works: Victoria Gitman’s Untitled (2015) and Cameron Rowland’s Handpunch (2014-2015).
Untitled (2015) by Victoria Gitman, Courtesy of Garth Greenan Gallery
Victoria Gitman (Argentine, born 1972) makes breathtakingly naturalistic oil paintings that are sensual and tactile works of extreme craftsmanship, and at the same time historically and conceptually sophisticated works of contemporary art. She painstakingly renders beaded and fur handbags, as with Untitled (2015), vintage necklaces and other accessories against shallow, monochrome backgrounds. Her subjects, sourced in thrift stores, flea markets and online, are painted from life at one-to-one scale, and carry the lush aura of Old Master painting. They allude to social concerns with regard to femininity and fashion, and critically engage many central issues in modern painting: the notion style, the material realities of surface and support, and the relationship between form, image and content. Untitled (2015) will be at home in relation to the CMA’s examples of trompe l’oeil painting from the 18th and 19th centuries as well as collection of post-1945 abstract art and art that related to the everyday.
Handpunch by Cameron Rowland
Handpunch (2014–15) is a work consisting of 5 photographs by Cameron Rowland (American, born 1988). Like much of Rowland’s work, Handpunch isolates and re-presents objects by which our society controls the lives of its poor and marginalized, often by preemptively criminalizing them. Each close-up color photograph in the series focuses on the use of the SchlageHandPunch, which relies on biometric data to monitor hourly wage labor. Punching in was previously a rote mechanical operation but now the process brings criminal indexing technology to the workplace. Rowland’s work fits perfectly with CMA’s renowned Schiller Collection and Photo League Collection, which focuses on art that engaged with social issues, particularly as they related to worker’s rights in the 1930s.
Cubism was a revolutionary new approach to representing reality created by artists Pablo Picasso and George Braque. To celebrate the exhibition Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change, Columbus Museum of Art, Greater Columbus Arts Council and Art Makes Columbus campaign have partnered to create a new reality for Columbus. A web based application at ColumbusMakesCubism.com encourages people to think like Picasso, experiment and make their own art by turning any photo into their own cubist masterpiece. Photos are saved to a digital gallery and can be shared on social media.
“CMA is thrilled to partner with the Arts Council on this unique project that turns everyone into an artist,” said CMA Executive Director Nannette V. Maciejunes. “The Museum values the creative process and the role artists play in cultivating imagination, connection and innovation. People can play like Picasso and exercise their creativity with ColumbusMakesCubism.com.”
“We’re delighted to support this fun and creative project,” said Tom Katzenmeyer, President and CEO of the Greater Columbus Arts Council. “We already know Columbus is home to many talented artists in all disciplines, and we love providing tools to encourage creativity in everyone.”
Images created at ColumbusMakesCubism.com that are tagged with #PicassoatCMA will appear on a digital display in the exhibition. Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change is on view through September 11.
