Exhibitions 2007-2008

More Than One: New Contemporary Prints and Multiples from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Collection
(October 4 - December 12, 2007)

In recent years, the Fine Arts Gallery has been building a collection of contemporary prints and multiples. More Than One: New Contemporary Prints and Multiples from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Collection will offer the first opportunity to view many of these works since the gallery acquired them. This exhibition is presented as collaboration with the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities 2006-2007 fellows and their two-day symposium Between Word and Image (October 25–26, 2007). More Than One will also incorporate a selection of historical prints from the collection. In an effort to explore the relationship between linguistic and visual artifacts, several prints included in this exhibition will be presented with commentaries written by the participating fellows.

Artists to be featured: Ron Adams (U.S.), Christiane Baumgartner (Germany), Harmen Brethouwer (The Netherlands), Enrique Chagoya (U.S.), Sue Coe (England), Michael Craig-Martin (England), Paul D’Amato (U.S.), Ian Hamilton Finlay (Scotland), Hamish Fulton (England), Mona Hatoum (England), William Hogarth (England), Fransje Killaars (The Netherlands), Joseph Kosuth (U.S.), Deborah Muirhead (U.S.), Martin Puryear (U.S.), Rosalyn Richards (U.S.), Thomas Rowlandson (England), Guntars Sietens (Latvia), Kiki Smith (U.S.), Stephen Tourlentes, (U.S.), Wouter van Riesen (The Netherlands), Kara Walker (U.S.), Mikio Wantaabe (Japan), Carrie Mae Weems (U.S.), and Terry Winters (U.S.).

Also featured in this exhibition will be an installation by Nashville artist Erika Johnson (U.S.) created in conversation with the 2007 fellows of the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt.

Click here for more information about the symposium Between Word and Image and other programming at the Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities.

Somewhere in Between: Recent Prints by Xiao Xin Lu, the 2006 Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award Winner Exhibition
(January 10–31, 2008)

This exhibition features new work by Xiao Xin Lu, the 2006 Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award winner. The Hamblet Award, given annually to a graduating Vanderbilt University senior, is one of the nation's highest independent cash prizes for excellence in undergraduate studio art. Over the past year, Hamblet award winner Lu used the $25,000.00 grant to return to China—where she lived until the age of seven—and immerse herself in both modern and traditional ways of life. The result of her travels is a collection of mixed media prints that scrutinize the dialectic of modern versus traditional Chinese culture and reveal Lu’s own acute encounter with cultural separation and reunification.

Of Rage and Redemption: The Art of Oswaldo Guayasamín
(February 7 - March 20, 2008)

This landmark exhibition presents the work of the renowned Ecuadorian painter and graphic artist Oswaldo Guayasamín (1919-1999). The first exhibit of its kind in the United States in over 50 years, the show covers each of Guayasamín's major periods, beginning with early paintings that reflect the plight of the indigenous peoples of the Andes to his more mature work that addresses human suffering in the context of war and injustice.

Guayasamín's work evokes strong emotional responses, dealing with the horrors of war, the injustices of inequality and discrimination, and the rights of women, children, and indigenous peoples. The winner of biennials in Barcelona and São Paulo, recipient of France's Legion of Honor, and recognized by UNESCO with its José Martí Prize, Guayasamín's work reflects his lifelong commitment to peace and social justice. The works chosen for this exhibition speak to issues of war and peace, social conflict, and human compassion, reflecting not only the artist's Latin American roots but also speaking to problems that the world faces today.

With the full cooperation of the Fundación Guayasamín, Quito, Ecuador, the largest depository of the artist's work in the Americas, the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies at Vanderbilt University and the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery will make this exhibition available for tour to select additional venues beginning in April 2008 and continuing through May 2009.

For more information about this exhibition including tour cites and dates click here.

[Organized by the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies at Vanderbilt University and the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery; curated by Joseph Mella, Director, Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery.]

National Tour Itinerary

• Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery and the Sarratt Gallery at Vanderbilt, Nashville, Tennessee (February 7-March 20, 2008)
• Art Museum of the Americas, Organization of American States, in cooperation with Georgetown University, Washington, DC (April 3-May 29, 2008)
• Museo Alameda, San Antonio, Texas (June 19-August 14, 2008)
• University Galleries, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida (September 19-November 1, 2008)
• Samek Art Gallery, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (January 23-March 27, 2009)
• Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, California (April 12-August 16, 2009)

Views from the Collection III
(April 3 - June 30, 2008)

Views from the Collection III is the third in a three-part series of exhibitions of art drawn from the Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Collection. This collection, the only ensemble of its kind in the area, includes the art of antiquity, Old Master prints and paintings, East Asian art, African and Pre-Columbian art and artifacts, contemporary graphics, and photography.

This current installment from the series will feature a cross-section of art from Europe, the United States, Japan, China, India, Papua New Guinea, and Africa. Highlights will include examples from the Samuel H. Kress Collection of Renaissance paintings, and two remarkable paintings that have recently received conservation treatment, the first by the nineteenth-century French painter Jules Adolphe Goupil, and the second, a late seventeenth-century portrait by Dutch painter Michiel van Müsscher. Other highlights include a selection of contemporary Japanese ceramics by masters of the medium such as Toshiko Takaezu and Hamada Shoji, a selection of etchings by the American master printmaker John Taylor Arms, and an unusual multiple by American composer, philosopher, writer, and printmaker John Cage.