A lot of the fun of going to see an exhibition can come from the inspiring ideas that an artist gets when they see another’s work. I know that at Art Basel Miami Beach last week, a lot of people were discussing how they could utilize new techniques and materials they saw there, in their own work, which is why it is so valuable to have The Art School working in collaboration with the Boca Raton Museum of Art.

Open to the community, The Art School offers classes in all manner of fine arts disciplines:

• 3-D (assemblage, fiber art, collage, mixed media)
• Drawing (children’s book illustration, fashion illustration, figure)
• Jewelry (casting, fabrication, lapidary)
• Painting (china & tile, encaustic, figure, portrait, watercolor)
• Photography (camera basics, fine art, Photoshop,)
• Sculpture (clay,stone, wheel-throwing) 
• Print (monoprint)
• And many others…

This December 12^th from 12:30 – 3:30 PM, The Art School will be hosting its Open House. You can come and meet the teachers and see examples of work from their previous classes.

The classes are quite affordable and many are taught by working artists who have earned their M.F.A. It is important that the teachers be active in their respective circles. For example, Susan Hanssen won The Gold Award from the Florida Watercolor Society for their 2010 exhibition.

Either beginner or professional can take part in one of the 100 weekly classes or lectures, as well as 40 weekend workshops. Lifetime learners and weekend warriors alike can benefit from the flexible schedule and broad spectrum of classes. The Adobe Photoshop classes are a special favorite of creative professionals looking to expand their repertoire.

In a nutshell, The Art School is a valuable facility that anyone can enjoy. The classes are small enough that an aspiring student can get the attention they need in a supportive atmosphere. Many students return year after year for both the opportunities provided and to become a part of the dynamic creative environment. There is no better place to learn about art opportunities than from the gossip of fellow artists!

Definitely stop by the Open House and rediscover the excitement of working alongside fellow creative minds, spark ideas and invigorate your creating side.

DUANE HANSON (American, 1925 – 1996), Security Guard, 1990, autobody filler (fiberglass and polyester resin) polychromed in oil, mixed media, with accessories, 72 x 32 x 15 inches. Loan, courtesy of Mrs. Duane Hanson

Meet the Boca Raton Museum of Art’s newest world traveler: Security Guard.

 This lifelike sculpture that is normally installed next to the actual security guards’ office in the museum has traveled all the way to Baden-Baden, Germany.  He isn’t seeking to claim a new position at the Museum Frieder Burda but rather was loaned to be part of the exhibition Duane Hanson/Gregory Crewdson: Uncanny Realities. 

From November 27, 2010 to March 6, 2011, Security Guard will be part of a larger exhibition comprised of 25 Hanson sculptures and 20 Gregory Crewdson large-scale photographs that deal with “the human abyss.”

In conjunction with the stark, eerie photographs, the Hanson sculptures will create a dialogue about the American middle-to-lower classes and the “disappointments of the American dream that are buried within them.”  Hanson’s unique ability to capture every imperfection in the sculpture’s physiognomy adds to the feeling of verité, therefore prompting a feeling of empathy on the part of the viewer. 

Other sculptures that appeared in the Boca Raton Museum of Art’s exhibition, Duane Hanson: Sculpture and Photographs 1978 – 1995 are Children Playing Game, Housepainter, and Man on Mower.  

Germany isn’t the first place that Security Guard has traveled.  He’s been no slouch on the sightseeing front.  Prior to the Boca Raton Museum of Art's exhibition, he visited the Albright-Knox Gallery of Art in 2004 for Bodily Space: New Obsessions in Figurative Sculpture, and the James A. Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, Pennsylvania from 2006 – 2007 for Duane Hanson: Real Life.

While Security Guard is in Germany enjoying the culinary delicacies and winter weather, the museum here in Boca will be filling our galleries with costumes from Cosprop, the London-based costumery for film, television, and theatre. CUT! Costume and the Cinema opens on January 18^th 2011.

VALERIO ADAMI (Italian, born in 1935 - ), Metamorfosi [Metamorphosis], 1982, acrylic on canvas, 76 1/2 x 95 3/4 inches. Courtesy of Fondo Adami, Fondazione Europea del Disegno. 

Mexican writer and Nobel Prize Laureate Octavio Paz writes about artist Valerio Adami in The Narrative Line, an essay included in the exhibition catalogue for the Boca Raton Museum of Art’s retrospective of Valerio Adami.  Looking at Adami’s work as an exercise in line, narrative and color, Paz uses these 3 elements to help the reader better understand Adami’s paintings. Space is created through color, a story is created through the inclusion of text, and the line can teach us about time. 

For instance, about space and color, Paz writes, “For Adami, colour cannot be separated from space. And so space is born out of his drawing. An unfelt transformation of the line, creator of spaces, into great blocks of colour.”

In terms of text in Adami’s artwork, Paz writes, “As an intelligent artist, Adami also writes. That is nothing unusual: writing is another art born out of silence. Naturally, he is not a professional writer; he writes on the margins of his painting, as a comment, or, more exactly, as an accompaniment…his notes are not an answer; but a way of approaching these paintings and hearing their question more clearly.”

Towards the end of his essay, Paz addresses line in Adami’s work, “Whether a poem, or a novel, whether a play or a review, every text is a succession of words; whereas the line is a succession of points, or rather, a succession of bridges between one point and the other. Time is linear, and, as it turns out, people have invented nothing better than a line for representing time. The forms drawn by Adami, with his unique, rapid and secure, free and elegant movement of his hand, are closed forms. Or, more exactly, forms closed in themselves. They talk among themselves and provoke within me an indefinable unease.”

If you enjoyed his prose, check out Octavio Paz’s 1990 Nobel Prize speech.

Paz’s entry is one of many in the catalogue in praise of Adami’s use of line, color, and text to create intense canvases that stimulate both the mind and the eye. Other eminent writers included in the catalogue are: critic Dore Ashton, journalist Italo Calvino, essayist Carlos Fuentes, poet Alain Jouffroy, and academician Antonio Tabucchi.  It is truly one of the Boca Raton Museum of Art’s most prolific compilations of writing.

Valerio Adami catalogues are available online or in the museum store for $39.95.

Photography has become ubiquitous in the digital age, giving everyone the tool for documenting everything from the moment one wakes up. Every look is captured, every event saved, every thought recorded. Although this power to record and disseminate expands the empowerment of each individual to affect history, the longevity of this visual narrative has yet to be determined.

Michael A. Smith, Chicago, 2008, 8 x 20 inches, gelatin silver chloride contact print. Courtesy of the artist

As a medium for affecting a global audience, photography as an art form and journalistic tool indeed presents us with the groundwork for discussing the actual longevity of this exploding movement. In doing so, consider what elevates a photograph and touches the aesthetic of the public psyche.

The renowned photographer Robert Adams talked about the three truths of landscape photography. According to Adams, “Landscape pictures can offer us, I think, three verities – geography, autobiography, and metaphor. Geography is, if taken alone, sometimes boring, autobiography is frequently trivial, and metaphor can be dubious. But taken together, as in the best work of people like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, the three kinds of information strengthen each other and reinforce what we all work to keep intact – an affection for life.”

Paula Chamlee, Jökulsárlón, Iceland, 2004, 8 x 10 inches, Gelatin Silver Chloride Contact Print. Courtesy of the artist

The photographs of Michael A. Smith and Paula Chamlee currently on exhibition at The Art School of the Boca Raton Museum of Art exemplify these “truths” and give us, the public, an opportunity to determine how one can achieve a lasting visual comment. They have spent their lives finding those images, those moments, those interpretations of their visions. Much of their work is landscape in nature with a unique interpretation of the subject, motive and truth of the lens.

Considering the impact of the medium today in our everyday lives, from Facebook posts to digital scrapbooks, the individual interested in expanding their skill to document a personal history that will exist beyond the visual byte would be well served to consider these three truths (geography, autobiography and metaphor) when they click the shutter and send the image out into the universe.

Andre Gisson, Museum, 1991, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 inches. Permanent Collection 1992.147. From Michael and Peggy Gourgourinis and Galerie Mihalis on behalf of the artist.

A recent article in the New York Times, “From Picassos to Sarcophagi, Guided by iPhone Apps,” addressed the omnipresence of smartphones and the insatiable lust of their users for new and better apps. In this case, the topic is, what apps are useful or could potentially be useful in a museum setting?

Renowned museums like the New York Museum of Modern Art, the American Museum of Natural History and the Brooklyn Museum make use of smartphone apps to better lead their guests through the exhibitions. In general, once the app is downloaded to the mobile device (each family of smartphones require a unique platform specific app) and the user is in the building they can click through information on specific artworks. Some of the electronic information supplements the material available on the wall text, some expand the experience with audio feeds while others offer no more than what is on view in the museum.

Writer Edward Rothstein notes the differences between the more common museum audio tour equipment versus the information available via the smartphone app. In sum, he isn’t overly impressed with the apps but notes there will most definitely be improvements to come, as the programs are still in their infancy.

About the MoMa app he writes, “Moreover, apart from the audio itself, information is slight and availability inconsistent. Search for works by Warhol: some have almost no commentary; others offer excerpts from a book; others link to audio commentary. The app never got easier to use; it remained fussy and interfering. It was a relief to turn it off.”

Overall, the applications are meant to supplement the viewing experience, not detract from it. Even if the first version is a bit tedious, it is no doubt that subsequent versions will become more streamlined as time passes.

I, myself, remember wishing I could lug all of my Contemporary Art History texts into the Centre Pompidou so that I could better show my friend the genesis of video art (which I had studied at university) while we looked at each piece in the exhibition. Instead, I could only suggest some preemptory reading for the train ride, and then had to rely on my own fallible memory once we were inside. I pity anyone who owns a smartphone who dares enter a museum with me now. There is no doubt I would hijack it in the name of on-the-spot research.

Which brings us to an obvious contention that many curators must have with using applications. Curators tend to mount shows in such a way that the artworks conduct a dialogue with each other. The visitors to the show are expected to consider the layout as a whole, and then focus more finely on specific areas. For instance, what does this gallery have in common with other galleries on this floor? What is different? And then, is there a theme to the series of artworks on this wall? Or, why is this specific painting hung above that drawing? The nuances of how a show is hung could easily be lost with most of the audience’s heads bent, looking up the corresponding image on their phones. It is possible that one could miss a larger concept found in the gallery at MoMa while looking up the specifics of Francis Bacon’s biography on Wikipedia.

But, the world is moving on, as they say and we shall move with it. The BRMA has an application available for viewing on our website through a Cooliris feed or through the Cooliris app on an iphone or ipad. It presents images from the permanent collection with their provenance on a 3-D wall. This presentation allows you to either continually scroll laterally through the exhibition or step through it in a traditional slide show format. The Museum’s eGallery makes viewing the works infinitely easier.

We have not yet implemented an application on the scale of the New York museums, but a visitor can use our eGallery while in the museum to identify which artworks they would like to see as well as read wall text that accompanies the pieces. Because Executive Director George Bolge chose the artworks as if he were planning a traditional gallery exhibition a visitor can experience a contextually complete experience from anywhere in the world or use it as a guide while visiting the Museum to find some of its most cherished pieces.

What kinds of applications would you like to see available at the museum?