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Forum:
Diane Samuels
September 15 – February
24
In 1997, Otmar Gotterbarm was driving Diane Samuels
through Germany when he stopped in the woods and explained that at that
very spot, on March 18, 1944, he saw a burning American airplane fall from
the sky. “After hearing that, the
unexceptional, undifferentiated bit of forest changed. The personal stories animate the
history,” Samuels told Elaine A. King in Sculpture magazine.
Samuels began as a sculptor and now works in various
media, embracing such transparent elements as time, sound, and memory, as
well as video and audio recordings.
The incident in the German woods, along with the memories of Norma
Perlmutter, who emigrated to the United States from the Warsaw Ghetto in
1922, are the basis of her current work in the Forum Gallery. In
this exhibition, Samuels transcribes the voices of Perlmutter and
Gotterbarm and then breaks their language down further into fragments.
“I became involved in World War II history via the
perspectives and narratives of living people who talk to me about their
memories of that period, and
younger people who tell me about trying to grapple with that history.”
Samuels explained to King. “There
is also something about people speaking, often in minimal English or with
my minimal grasp of other languages, that makes for a very pared-down,
direct, to-the-point narration. But
it’s the fragility of the strong memories, the images conjured, and the
sounds of the voices – not necessarily the specific memory – that interest
me.”
Decorative Arts Symposium –
Monday, October 22, 2001
9:00 am – 2:30 pm
Possession Obsession: Artists, Houses, Studios,
Collections
Artists tend to be collectors.
Andy Warhol collected cookie jars as well as Art Deco furniture. Frederick
Church and William Merritt Chase influenced fashionable taste in this
country, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti¹s decorated furniture reflected his
artistic ideals.
At a symposium sponsored by
The Women¹s Committee of Carnegie Museum of Art, Stephen Calloway,
Associate Curator of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, will speak
on Palaces of Art and the
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and Karen Zukowski, former curator of
Frederick Church¹s home and studio, Olana, will present A Pleasant Confusion of Beautiful
Things: American Artists¹ Studios in the Late Nineteenth Century. After
lunch, Ingrid Schaffner, Adjunct Senior Curator at the Institute of
Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, will present Trash > Treasure Art: Contemporary
Artists and the Art of Collecting.
William Merritt Chase
The Tenth Street Studio
Oil on canvas, c. 1889 -
1905
Cost is $50 for members, $55 for nonmembers, and includes lunch for those
pre-registered. For information, call the Decorative Arts department at
412.622.6265.
Museum acquires Duane Michals archive
Carnegie Museum of Art
is acquiring the archive of photographer Duane Michals, which includes
approximately 300 gelatin-silver prints, working prints, and other
materials. This acquisition reveals a new focus on contemporary
photography, says Richard Armstrong, Henry J. Heinz II director of Carnegie
Museum of Art. “With the recent
establishment of the Irving and Aaronel de Roy Gruber Fund for Photography
– the museum’s first such endowment for the purchase of contemporary photography
– the collection is changing by acquiring today’s photography in a more
comprehensive way. Duane Michals's
work will be at the center of this effort, as the transfer of
photographs continues over the next
10 years.
Michals, one of
contemporary photography's most acclaimed artists, is a native of McKeesport. The acquisition of the
Michals archive has been made possible by the Henry L. Hillman Fund.
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