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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 6, 2010

PRESS CONTACT:           
Andrea Potochniak
607 254-4563
arp37@cornell.edu

Including contemporary photography and video,
artists’ visits, and much more

Ithaca, NY—The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University announces its exhibition schedule for Spring 2010.

All are welcome at this semester’s two free opening receptions: Friday, February 12 and Friday, April 9. Both receptions will be held from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. and include refreshments and live music. For additional events throughout the semester, please visit our website at www.museum.cornell.edu.

EXHIBITION AND PROGRAM SCHEDULE
Programs and participants are subject to change. All events are free of charge unless noted.

Carolee Schneemann: Interior Scroll
On view now through April 18
Carolee Schneemann has worked in performance, assemblage, photography, film, video, and installation, but is best known for her pioneering work in feminist performance art, using her body to explore the power of female sexuality. The thirteen prints included in this suite document her performance of Interior Scroll, performed first in 1975 in East Hampton for the “Women Here and Now” festival and again in 1977 at the Telluride Film Festival. In this and many of Schneemann’s other performances,she insisted on the body as explicitly sexual, refusing to divorce sexual experience from art-making and introducing the body of the female artist as the source of her creative and imaginative energy.

Related program:
Thursday, February 25, 5:15 p.m.
ARTIST’S TALK
Carolee Schneemann will discuss her work.

In Your Face: Contemporary Portrait Photography
January 16–March 21
With the invention of photography, its most popular early use was for recording the likenesses of friends and loved ones. Over 170 years later, conceptions of portraiture have changed dramatically, and this exhibition looks at the recent “up close and personal” approach through the work of artists such as Thomas Ruff, Nikki Lee, Thomas Struth, and Sally Mann.

Sam Jury: forever is never 
January 16–March 28
Since graduating from Cornell with an MFA in painting in 1998, Sam Jury has predominantly worked with photography and video. forever is never developed during the making of a series of over-life-size photographic portraits. In a labor-intensive process that involved the sculpting of a blank head onto which the artist projected hundreds of portraits culled from historical as well as contemporary sources, Jury creates an animated portrait that is no one and everyone all at once.

Related program:
Thursday, April 8, 5:15 p.m.
ARTIST’S TALK
Sam Jury will discuss her work.

James Siena: From the Studio
January 16–April 18
James Siena, Cornell Class of 1979, is the 2009–10 recipient of the Eissner Artist of the Year Award from the Cornell Council for the Arts, which the CCA and the Museum are jointly celebrating with a very personal exhibition of the artist’s work selected exclusively from his studio. Siena’s work has been shown in over one hundred solo and group shows including the 2004 Whitney Biennial. The exhibition will also include works by contemporaries he has traded for and bought, examples from Siena’s extensive collection of antique typewriters and calculating machines, and a series of in-progress sculptural pieces.

Related programs:
Thursday, February 11, 12:00 noon–1:00 p.m.
ART FOR LUNCH
Curator Andrea Inselmann will discuss this exhibition.

Friday, April 16, 4:30 p.m.
ARTIST’S TALK AND AWARD CEREMONY
James Siena will discuss his work and be presented with the Eissner Artist of the Year Award, presented by the Cornell Council for the Arts in collaboration with University Council’s Committee on the Arts.

An Earthly Paradise: The Art of Living at the French Renaissance Court
January 16–April 18
The Johnson Museum and Cornell Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections present an exhibition of prints, books, manuscripts, and portraits reflecting the culture of the French Renaissance court. Celebrating this splendid and cruel period in French history, the exhibition explores the French kings and other powerful figures, both men and women, as both warriors and patrons of the arts, presenting a visual record of some of their most sumptuous palaces and interior decorative schemes. Cosponsored by the French Studies Program.

Related programs:
Thursday, January 28, 12:00 noon–1:00 p.m.
ART FOR LUNCH
Curators Andy Weislogel and Laurent Ferri will discuss this exhibition.

Friday, March 5, 6:00–8:00 p.m.
AN EVENING AT THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE COURT
Celebrate French Renaissance culture with an evening featuring David Yearsley on harpsichord, lute song by Mignarda, poetry readings, tours of the exhibition, and, of course, tastings of French wines and cheeses. FEES: $15 general/$10 students. Registration and payment are required by February 26; please call 607 255-6464.

Modern Japanese Studio Ceramics 
January 30–March 21
Concerted efforts in postwar Japan to revive traditional crafts and reestablish national identity fostered the flourishing of a ceramic arts movement that continues to thrive today. Drawn from the Johnson’s permanent collection, including many recent acquisitions, and loans from private collections, this exhibition presents the astonishing range of forms, clays, glazes, and technical virtuosity that enlivens modern and contemporary Japanese ceramic art.

Related program:
Thursday, February 25, 12:00 noon–1:00 p.m.
ART FOR LUNCH
Curator Ellen Avril will discuss this exhibition.

The Image Wrought: Historical Photographic Approaches in the Digital Age
January 30–March 28
This exhibition reexamines historical photographic processes and their use by contemporary photographers in our increasingly digital age. Juxtaposing historical imagery with contemporary work, the show demonstrates the aesthetic and artistic possibilities in returning to the techniques of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This exhibition was organized by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, and funded at the Johnson in part by a grant from the Cornell Council for the Arts.

Related programs:
Sunday, February 7, 3:00 p.m.
SUNDAY ARTBREAK
Photographer Christopher Wright will discuss alternative photographic processes.

Thursday, March 11, 5:15 p.m.
ARTIST’S TALK
Photographer France Scully Osterman will discuss her work, some of which is included in this exhibition.

Thursday, March 18, 12:00 noon–1:00 p.m.
ART FOR LUNCH
Curator Nancy Green will discuss this exhibition.

Topography in Translation: Navigating Modern Chinese Landscapes
February 13–March 28
From the iconic monumentality of hanging scrolls to the conceptual rhetoric of photographs today, the Chinese landscape is always evolving. This exhibition opens up a dialogue between the traditions of the past and the modernization of China through the idea of landscape. Curated by Cornell students in Professor An-yi Pan’s Fall 2009 exhibition seminar.

Related program:
Friday, February 12, 4:30 p.m.
GALLERY TALK
Student curators will discuss this exhibition prior to the opening reception, which will begin at 5:00 p.m.

Michael Ashkin 
April 3–July 11
Michael Ashkin’s signature works reflect his interest in issues related to landscape, especially marginalized industrial wastelands. His work has been shown widely nationally and internationally, most recently at Secession in Vienna. This exhibition, which is a celebration of the artist’s 2009 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, will include photographic work, video, and a major topographical installation made from recycled cardboard, as well as writings by the artist. Ashkin is currently director of graduate studies in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning’s Department of Art.

Related programs:
Thursday, April 15, 5:15 p.m.
ARTIST’S TALK
Michael Ashkin will discuss his work.

Thursday, April 22, 12:00 noon–1:00 p.m.
ART FOR LUNCH
Visiting lecturer and scholar Anthony Graves will lead a tour of the exhibition.

Nature Observed and Imagined: 500 Years of Chinese Painting 
April 10–June 13
From theoretical landscapes to direct observations, this exhibition explores the evolution of Chinese artists’ approaches to depicting the natural world in the Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties. The exhibition includes major loans from private collections side by side with the Johnson’s own fine collection of Chinese painting to present treasures by many of China’s great master painters.

Related program:
Thursday, May 6, 12:00 noon–1:00 p.m.
ART FOR LUNCH
Curator Ellen Avril will discuss this exhibition.

Bodies Unbound: The Classical and Grotesque 
April 10–July 18
This exhibition, curated by the seventeen undergraduate members of Cornell’s History of Art Majors’ Society, will explore fundamental details in European and American visual culture and fine art from a wide historical breadth, examining the “classical” and “grotesque” as stylistic and formal qualities, theories, and sociopolitical tools and texts. With visual and theoretical juxtapositions, putting particular emphasis where the two terms overlap, images of the body are presented to explore iconic as well as strange representations of the human figure. This exhibition is funded in part by a grant from the Cornell Council for the Arts and a generous gift from Betsey and Alan Harris.

Related program:
Thursday, April 15, 12:00 noon–1:00 p.m.
ART FOR LUNCH
Student curators from the History of Art Majors’ Society will discuss this exhibition.

Contemporary Landscape Photography
April 24–July 18
This exhibition will showcase photographs from the collection that show how representations of landscapes have changed over the last century.

 Special Programs

Thursday, January 21 and Friday, January 22, 2:00–3:00 p.m.
LIGHT IN WINTER tours
Explore our special exhibitions and permanent collections on free guided tours.

Sunday, January 24
SUNDAY ARTBREAK, 3:00 p.m.
Educator Hannah Dunn Ryan will explore themes in contemporary art.

Sunday, February 21
COMMUNITY OPEN HOUSE, 1:00–4:00 p.m.
Join us for an afternoon of performances, art making, tastes, and fun in celebration of our spring exhibitions.

Friday, February 26
STUDENT ARTS SHOWCASE, 8:00–10:30 p.m.
Join us for a reception celebrating the many talents of Cornell students. Watch student performances and view student artwork at this free event, organized by the Museum Club. Artwork will remain on view at the Museum through Sunday, February 28.

Sunday, March 14
CONCERT, 2:00 p.m.
The Cornell Piano Society and the Museum Club present their free annual concert.

Sunday, March 14
SUNDAY ARTBREAK, 3:00 p.m.
Curator Nancy Green will explore trends in contemporary works on paper.

Wednesday, March 17
LECTURE, 4:30 p.m.
Professor Neil Price, head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen, will discuss the study of the Holocaust through archaeology. Cosponsored by the Department of History and the Medieval Studies Program.

Sunday, May 16
CONCERT, 2:00 p.m.
The Cornell Middle Eastern & Mediterranean Music Ensemble present a free concert.

The Johnson Museum has a permanent collection of over 30,000 works of art from Africa, Asia, Europe, and North and South America. The museum building was designed by I. M. Pei. Funds for the building were donated by Cornell alumnus Herbert F. Johnson, late president and chairman of S C Johnson. The building opened in 1973.

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The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, located on the campus of Cornell University, is open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Admission is free. The Museum is accessible for mobility-impaired visitors, and a wheelchair is available in the lobby. Metered parking is available in the lot next to the Museum. For more information, please call 607 255-6464. Visit the Museum’s website at www.museum.cornell.edu. The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art is a proud member of Ithaca’s Discovery Trail: www.DiscoveryTrail.com.

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