Art Overview / Curators on the Cusp • Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award • Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Research Grant
Announcing the 2019 Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award and Exhibition Research Grant recipients
The Exhibition Award was created in 1998 to honor the talent and artistic vision of our founder, Emily Hall Tremaine. Her passion for art and support of living artists inspired, challenged, and brought joy to those around her. The Exhibition Award continues to reflect Emily Hall Tremaine’s trailblazing spirit by supporting thematic exhibitions of contemporary art that are fresh and experimental in nature. This year we've expanded the opportunity to include two exhibition research grants for ideas that match the values and spirit of the Exhibition Award but were not yet ready to apply for the full award.
|
The 2019 recipient is...
Hamza Walker and Kara Walker LAXART Los Angeles, CA Exhibition: Monuments Projected opening: September 2021 |
MONUMENTS is a two-location exhibition – one element will focus on decommissioned Confederate monuments that will be sited in public areas around Los Angeles (a city unfamiliar with such statues), and the second element will focus on smaller monuments and artifacts that will be in dialogue with the work of contemporary artists within LAXART galleries.
For the public displays, rather than placing the decommissioned monuments in a conventional park/plaza setting, the curators will employ an alternative display strategy that will take into account the monument’s plight as homeless – for example, simply using tractor-trailer flat beds as pedestals. While their appearance as a form of public commemoration represents the persistence of racist and tragically outmoded ideologies, these statues also raise questions around free speech, censorship, and American history.
By assembling a rogues gallery of Confederate statuary and material culture, the exhibition will activate so as to confront the ideology of The Lost Cause. Founded in the early 20th century, The Lost Cause contends that the Civil War was not so much about slavery as it was about states’ rights and defending the Southern way of life. In that light, not only were the architects and defenders of the Confederacy heroes, but that way of life was to be extended and preserved in the form of Jim Crow. In essence, the Confederate monument and Jim Crow laws are one and the same.
It is not the monument’s historical but its present day ideological bearing that needs to be exposed. And this is what happens when they are removed. To remove the monument is to break with a mythologizing of the past for the sake of being delivered into a present where beliefs can be confronted, challenged and contested. In that respect, the Confederate monument quietly situated in a park on its pedestal does not belong to us, whereas the removed monument does.
For the public displays, rather than placing the decommissioned monuments in a conventional park/plaza setting, the curators will employ an alternative display strategy that will take into account the monument’s plight as homeless – for example, simply using tractor-trailer flat beds as pedestals. While their appearance as a form of public commemoration represents the persistence of racist and tragically outmoded ideologies, these statues also raise questions around free speech, censorship, and American history.
By assembling a rogues gallery of Confederate statuary and material culture, the exhibition will activate so as to confront the ideology of The Lost Cause. Founded in the early 20th century, The Lost Cause contends that the Civil War was not so much about slavery as it was about states’ rights and defending the Southern way of life. In that light, not only were the architects and defenders of the Confederacy heroes, but that way of life was to be extended and preserved in the form of Jim Crow. In essence, the Confederate monument and Jim Crow laws are one and the same.
It is not the monument’s historical but its present day ideological bearing that needs to be exposed. And this is what happens when they are removed. To remove the monument is to break with a mythologizing of the past for the sake of being delivered into a present where beliefs can be confronted, challenged and contested. In that respect, the Confederate monument quietly situated in a park on its pedestal does not belong to us, whereas the removed monument does.
|
The 2019 recipients are...
Brandon Nichols Reintjes, Missoula Art Museum, Missoula, MT Shannon R. Stratton, The Poor Farm, Milwaukee, WI |
|
Curator Brandon Nichols Reintjes will research and potentially develop an exhibition that gathers together major contemporary Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists who use visual art to explore issues surrounding the topic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women. Research funds will be used for travel and accommodations for curatorial investigation and site visits. Curators will travel to all seven reservations throughout Montana in 2019 and 2020. In addition, curators will research and identify other potential artists or art projects. A portion of the research funds will be designated to visit reservations and meet with family members of missing and murdered Indigenous women to better understand the complexities and breadth of the problem.
|
Curator Shannon Stratton will undergo research for Slow Frequency, a potential biannual exhibition concept whose mission is to address the question: "how to curate in a climate crisis?" It is designed to take place in collaboration with art spaces and independent arts organizers networked throughout the globe who collectively site projects that have as little carbon footprint as possible and last as long as their natural life - until they die out, decompose or are otherwise finished. In this sense, it is all time-based art. Slow Frequency prioritizes creating a global community of artists, curators, arts spaces and other participants from a range of fields, around the possibilities of a shared global cultural engagement that demonstrates climate advocacy through a mindful shift in cultural production and participation.
|