More than 50,000 people attended the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art?s ?Decorative Arts at the World?s Fairs? exhibit, featuring stellar objects drawn from almost a century?s worth of world?s fairs.
At the Kemper Museum, the most talked about event in 2012 was not the Lois Dodd show or the ongoing ?Map as Art? exhibit of intricate and arresting works. Instead it was the decision to cut staff for financial reasons and the departure of longtime director Rachael Blackburn Cozad. The Nerman Museum kicked off the year with a thought-provoking exhibit of new work by Rashawn Griffin, who grew up in Olathe and gained the national spotlight following his inclusion in the Studio Museum in Harlem?s 2005-06 ?Frequency? show of new black art. It ended it with ?Oppenheimer Collection @ 20,? a summation of Tony and Marti Oppenheimer?s commitment to providing the institution with a steady stream of contemporary acquisitions. For topicality and intelligence, it didn?t get better than Raechell Smith?s ?On Watch? exhibit at Block Artspace, presenting a global roster of artists whose works addressed the theme of surveillance in contemporary society. Smith amped it up with an outdoor Project Wall that raised the controversial issue of U.S. drones. The Johnson County Museum made a pitch-perfect selection with ?Bill Owens: Suburbia,? a relevant exhibit of culturally revealing photographs exploring the American Dream. Kansas City public art administrator Porter Arneill presided over one of the year?s most ambitious projects: Janet Zweig?s ?Prairie Logic,? a full-size boxcar installed in a setting of prairie grasses on the roof of a downtown city garage. But Kansas City artist Jarrett Mellenbruch?s ?Float? installation, of functional hammocks installed in the green space by the Bartle Hall ballroom, proved every bit as engaging during its summer run as part of the 2012 Avenue of the Arts. The year?s big disappointment was ?Visions of Mexican Art? at Union Station. Conceived to introduce viewers to important Mexican art movements in the last century, the exhibit was undermined by a crowded, noisy installation next to the clackety model trains. And the featured works were presented without enough information to allow viewers to make a meaningful connection. Several of the year?s most interesting developments centered on individual artworks. In March, it was revealed that the Nelson?s Degas pastel of a dancer, for years part of the impressionist collection of Marion and Henry Bloch, had been the subject of an FBI search following its 1992 disappearance from the private collection of copper heiress Huguette Clark in New York. Over the summer, the Nelson embarked on the tedious restoration of its Gustave Courbet painting, ?Portrait of Jo,? which had suffered a serious tear in the 1920s and had been subjected to an overzealous treatment in the 1940s. Conservator Mary Schafer is spending nine months working to return the painting to its original beauty, and ?Portrait of Jo? will return to public view this spring. The Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas definitively established that a Renaissance painting titled ?Christ Carrying the Cross,? which had been part of the museum?s collection since 1953, was the work of artist Giorgio Vasari. It celebrated the attribution by devoting an entire exhibition to the painting and works that influenced it.The 2012 exhibition season was marked by several small shows with big impact and a couple of experiments that threw aesthetics to the winds. For three weeks last summer, the Spencer exhibited a wondrous array of Turkish kilims assembled by art collector Harrison Jedel and artist Dale Eldred during their travels to Turkey in the 1960s and ?70s. A casual mode of display ? the rugs were strewn across the floor and draped over pedestals ? heightened the impact of their vibrant colors and patterns. A loan from a private collection made for a similarly engaging one-gallery show at the Nelson, where a 4-foot-tall ?Egg? (2010) composed of stainless steel cooking wares hung from the ceiling in a small gallery in the East Asian department. (It was recently moved to the postmodern galleries in the Bloch Building.) The artwork, by leading Indian artist Subodh Gupta, belongs to Kansas City collectors Bill and Christy Gautreaux. The Nelson?s Chinese painting galleries racked up a winner with ?Faces From China?s Past: Paintings for Entertainment & Remembrance,? an exhibit of charming portraits of everyday people by mostly unknown artists, while the photography department?s Timothy O?Sullivan exhibit offered fascinating new insights into the nation?s westward expansion. The Nelson and the Spencer ventured into uncharted territory with exhibits designed to engage audiences in new ways. The Spencer?s ?Prepared: Strategies for Activists,? a no-holds-barred exhibit of posters, placards and protest paraphernalia spearheaded by Chinese artist Chen Shaoxiong, resonated with the U.S. Occupy movement. At the Nelson, ?The Magnificent Collection of Gilbert B. Hargrove? is a cabinet of curiosities featuring objects and oddities drawn from museum storage and private holdings. The exhibit grew out of a story by Fringe Festival producer/director Tara Varney, about a fictional 19th-century adventurer who traveled the world collecting things that he donated to the Nelson. The Hargrove show was conceived in a bid to attract 20- to 40-year-olds to the museum. If its paintings on clam shells and bear claw necklaces don?t work, a provocative contemporary show might be the best recourse. In all, the past year was not the liveliest at Kansas City?s museums and exhibition spaces. We could use a heady dose of the new and unpredictable. Maybe the Chiefs Art Program could get us that big Jonathan Borofsky sculpture, proposed but voted down, for the renovated Union Station. It would be a start.Source: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/12/26/3980212/kc-art-in-2012-sights-to-remember.html
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