Nasher Museum of Art
Encyclopedia
The Nasher Museum of Art is the art museum of Duke University
, and is located on Duke's campus in Durham, North Carolina
, USA. The $24 million museum was designed by architect Rafael Viñoly
and opened on October 2, 2005. The first year after opening drew almost 100,000 visitors.
The museum, named for Raymond Nasher
, and directed by Kimerly Rorschach, contains more than 13,000 works of art in its collection, including works by Ai Weiwei
, Romare Bearden
, Christian Boltanski
, William Cordova, Petah Coyne, Noah Davis, Rineke Dijkstra
, Marlene Dumas
, Sam Durant
, Olafur Eliasson
, Darío Escobar
, Francois Gerard
, David Hammons
, Barkley L. Hendricks
, Sean Landers
, Hong Lei, David Levinthal, Sol LeWitt
, Glenn Ligon
, Christian Marclay
, Dan Perjovschi
, Paul Pfeiffer, Robert A. Pruitt, Robin Rhode
, Dario Robleto
, Ed Ruscha, John Singer Sargent
, Cindy Sherman
, Gary Simmons, Xaviera Simmons, Lorna Simpson
, Jeff Sonhouse, Eve Sussman
, Alma Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas
, Mickalene Thomas
, Bob Thompson, Kara Walker
, Nari Ward
, Andy Warhol
, Carrie Mae Weems
, Kehinde Wiley
, Fred Wilson
and Lynette Yiadom Boakye
. The museum is dedicated to presenting under-recognized contemporary art from around the world as seen in the exhibition Street Level: Mark Bradford, William Cordova and Robin Rhode, as well as the first career retrospectives of Barkley L. Hendricks and Dan and Lia Perjovschi.
In the 1940s, Duke turned down the bequest of art collector William Hayes Ackland to build an art museum on campus; his donation went instead to the nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
for its Ackland Art Museum
.
September 2, 2010 – February 6, 2011
This is the first museum exhibition to explore the culture of vinyl records within the history of contemporary art. Bringing together forty-one artists from around the world who have worked with records as their subject or medium, this groundbreaking exhibition examines the record’s transformative power in the years from the 1960s to the present. Through sound work, sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, video, and performance, The Record combines contemporary art with outsider art
, audio with visual, fine art with popular culture, and established artists with those exhibiting in a U.S. museum for the first time. The 41 artists in the exhibition include Laurie Anderson
, David Byrne
, Janet Cardiff
, William Cordova, Jeroen Diepenmaat, Jasper Johns
, Jack Goldstein
, Taiyo Kimura, Ralph Lemon
, Christian Marclay
, Mingering Mike
, Dave Muller, Vik Muniz
, 9th Wonder
, DJ Rekha
, Robin Rhode
, Dario Robleto
, Ed Ruscha, Malick Sidibe
, Xaviera Simmons, Su-Mei Tse
, and Carrie Mae Weems
. The exhibition is curated by Trevor Schoonmaker.
Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool
February 7, 2008 – July 13, 2008
This exhibit is the first career painting retrospective of renowned American artist Barkley L. Hendricks
. Born in 1945 in Philadelphia, Hendricks' unique work resides at the nexus of American realism and post-modernism, a space somewhere between portraitists Chuck Close and Alex Katz and pioneering black conceptualists David Hammons and Adrian Piper. He is best known for his stunning, life-sized portraits of people of color from the urban northeast. Cool, empowering and sometimes confrontational, Hendricks' artistic privileging of a culturally complex black body has paved the way for today's younger generation of artists who are deeply indebted to him. This exhibition of Hendricks' paintings includes work from 1964 to the present. The exhibition will travel to the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Santa Monica Museum (Los Angeles,)the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. There is a definitive full-color exhibition catalogue with over 160 reproductions, edited by the Nasher Museum's curator of contemporary art Trevor Schoonmaker.
El Greco to Velazquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III
August 21, 2008 – November 9, 2008
The Nasher Museum collaborated with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
to present this groundbreaking exhibition – the first in the US to focus on Spanish art of the period between 1598 and 1621. The show examines a fascinating period bookended by the two giants of Spanish painting: the late works of El Greco
and the early paintings of Velázquez
. The exhibition is the culmination of 20 years of research by Sarah Schroth, the Nasher Museum's senior curator.
This exhibition includes some 120 paintings, sculptures and decorative art pieces, representing 20 artists. The masters will be seen in context with lesser-known artists working during this time in Spain. The show will bring together works of art from museums around the world, some of which rarely travel outside of their countries, creating a unique opportunity for American audiences. Key loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
, the Museo del Prado
, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and the National Gallery of Art
, among other institutions and private lenders, were secured.
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
, and is located on Duke's campus in Durham, North Carolina
Durham, North Carolina
Durham is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the county seat of Durham County and also extends into Wake County. It is the fifth-largest city in the state, and the 85th-largest in the United States by population, with 228,330 residents as of the 2010 United States census...
, USA. The $24 million museum was designed by architect Rafael Viñoly
Rafael Viñoly
Rafael Viñoly is an Uruguayan architect living in the United States.-Biography:He was born in Montevideo, Uruguay to Román Viñoly Barreto, and Maria Beceiro ....
and opened on October 2, 2005. The first year after opening drew almost 100,000 visitors.
The museum, named for Raymond Nasher
Raymond Nasher
Raymond Nasher was a Duke University alumnus who was an avid art collector. Together with his wife Patsy, he amassed a substantial number of the world's greatest sculptures and various other important pieces...
, and directed by Kimerly Rorschach, contains more than 13,000 works of art in its collection, including works by Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei is a Chinese contemporary artist, active in sculpture, installation, architecture, curating, photography, film, and social, political and cultural criticism. Ai collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron as the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008...
, Romare Bearden
Romare Bearden
Romare Bearden was an African American artist and writer. He worked in several media including cartoons, oils, and collage.-Education:...
, Christian Boltanski
Christian Boltanski
Christian Boltanski is French sculptor, photographer, painter and film maker.-Life and work:Having no formal art education, he began painting in 1958. Nevertheless, he first came to public attention in 1960 with few short films and publication of several notebooks...
, William Cordova, Petah Coyne, Noah Davis, Rineke Dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra
Rineke Dijkstra is a female Dutch photographer.-Life and work:Dijkstra concentrates on single portraits, and usually works in series, looking at groups such as adolescents, clubbers, and soldiers. Her subjects are often shown standing, facing the camera, against a minimal background...
, Marlene Dumas
Marlene Dumas
Marlene Dumas is a South African born artist and painter who lives and works in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Stressing both the physical reality of the human body and its psychological value, Dumas tends...
, Sam Durant
Sam Durant
Sam Durant is a multimedia artist whose works engage a variety of social, political, and cultural issues. Often referencing American history, his work explores the varying relationships between culture and politics, engaging subjects as diverse as the civil rights movement, southern rock music,...
, Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson
Olafur Eliasson is a Danish-Icelandic artist known for sculptures and large-scale installation art employing elemental materials such as light, water, and air temperature to enhance the viewer’s experience. In 1995 he established Studio Olafur Eliasson in Berlin, a laboratory for spatial research...
, Darío Escobar
Darío Escobar
Darío Escobar is known for his sculptural recontextualization of everyday objects. Born in Guatemala , his Catholic background and interest in local history became sources of inspiration for a body of work that combines mass-produced objects, craft techniques, and religious...
, Francois Gerard
François Gerard
François Pascal Simon, Baron Gérard was a French painter born in Rome, where his father occupied a post in the house of the French ambassador. His mother was Italian. As a baron of the Empire he is sometimes referred to as Baron Gérard.-Life:François Gérard was born in Rome, on 12 March 1770, to...
, David Hammons
David Hammons
David Hammons is an African-American artist mostly known for his works in and around New York City during the 1970s and 1980s.Much of his work, including Spade with Chains , reflects his commitment to the civil rights and Black Power movements...
, Barkley L. Hendricks
Barkley L. Hendricks
Barkley L. Hendricks is a contemporary American painter who has made pioneering contributions to black portraiture and conceptualism. While he has worked in a variety of media and genres throughout his career , Hendricks' best known work takes the form of life-sized painted oil portraits...
, Sean Landers
Sean Landers
Sean Landers is a contemporary artist working and living in New York, United States.Sean Landers was born in Palmer, Massachusetts. He is known for paintings with a central painted picture surrounded with text...
, Hong Lei, David Levinthal, Sol LeWitt
Sol LeWitt
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including Conceptual art and Minimalism....
, Glenn Ligon
Glenn Ligon
Glenn Ligon is an American conceptual artist whose work explores race, language, desire, sexuality, and identity. He engages in intertextuality with other works from the visual arts, literature, and history, as well as his own life.-Early life and career:...
, Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay is a Swiss-American visual artist and composer.Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film...
, Dan Perjovschi
Dan Perjovschi
Dan Perjovschi is an artist, writer and cartoonist born in 1961 in Sibiu, Romania. Perjovschi has over the past decade created drawings in museum spaces, most recently in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City in which he created the drawing during business hours for patrons to see. The drawings...
, Paul Pfeiffer, Robert A. Pruitt, Robin Rhode
Robin Rhode
Robin Rhode is a South African artist, born 1976 in Cape Town, South Africa, now based in Berlin, Germany. In 1998, he obtained a diploma in Fine Art from Technikon Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, followed by a postgraduate program at the South African School of Film, Television and...
, Dario Robleto
Dario Robleto
Dario Robleto is an American conceptual artist who lives and works in Houston, Texas. Robleto received his BFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1997 and has subsequently served as an artist in residence at several institutions including the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, the California...
, Ed Ruscha, John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the "leading portrait painter of his generation" for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and charcoal drawings...
, Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman
Cindy Sherman is an American photographer and film director, best known for her conceptual portraits. Sherman currently lives and works in New York City. In 1995, she was the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship. She is represented by Sprüth Magers Berlin London in and Metro Pictures gallery in...
, Gary Simmons, Xaviera Simmons, Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson
Lorna Simpson is an African American artist and photographer who made her name in the 1980s and 1990s with artworks such as Guarded Conditions and Square Deal. Her work often portrays black women combined with text to express contemporary society's relationship with race, ethnicity and sex...
, Jeff Sonhouse, Eve Sussman
Eve Sussman
Eve Sussman is a British-born American artist. She was educated at Robert College of Istanbul, University of Canterbury and Bennington College. She resides in Brooklyn, New York, where her company, the Rufus Corporation is based; however, she continuously visits cultural centers around the world,...
, Alma Thomas, Hank Willis Thomas
Hank Willis Thomas
Hank Willis Thomas is a contemporary African American visual artist and photographer whose primary interests are race, advertising and popular culture.-Parents:...
, Mickalene Thomas
Mickalene Thomas
New York-based artist Mickalene Thomas is known for her elaborate paintings adorned with rhinestones, enamel and colorful acrylics. She received her BFA from Pratt Institute in 2000, and her MFA from Yale University in 2002 and currently lives and works in New York...
, Bob Thompson, Kara Walker
Kara Walker
Kara Walker is a contemporary African American artist who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes, such as The Means to an End--A Shadow Drama in Five Acts.-Biography:Walker was born in...
, Nari Ward
Nari Ward
Nari Ward is an artist based in New York. Nari Ward received a BA from Hunter College, CUNY in 1991 and a MFA from Brooklyn College, CUNY in 1992...
, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, Carrie Mae Weems
Carrie Mae Weems
Carrie Mae Weems is an award-winning photographer and artist. Her photographs, films, and videos have been displayed in over 50 exhibitions in the United States and abroad and focus on serious issues that face African Americans today, such as racism, gender relations, politics, and personal identity...
, Kehinde Wiley
Kehinde Wiley
Kehinde Wiley is a New York-based portrait painter, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of contemporary urban African, African-American, Afro-Brazilian, Indian and Ethiopian-Jewish men in heroic poses.-Early life:...
, Fred Wilson
Fred Wilson
Fred Wilson is a former politician in Ontario, Canada. He served as a New Democratic Party member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1990 to 1995, and was a cabinet minister in the government of Bob Rae....
and Lynette Yiadom Boakye
Lynette Yiadom Boakye
Lynette Yiadom Boakye is an artist of Ghanaian descent based in London.Boakye attended Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, Falmouth College of Arts and the Royal Academy Schools....
. The museum is dedicated to presenting under-recognized contemporary art from around the world as seen in the exhibition Street Level: Mark Bradford, William Cordova and Robin Rhode, as well as the first career retrospectives of Barkley L. Hendricks and Dan and Lia Perjovschi.
In the 1940s, Duke turned down the bequest of art collector William Hayes Ackland to build an art museum on campus; his donation went instead to the nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is a public research university located in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States...
for its Ackland Art Museum
Ackland Art Museum
The Ackland Art Museum is a museum and academic unit of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was founded through the bequest of William Hayes Ackland to The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It is located at 101 S...
.
Selected exhibitions
The Record: Contemporary Art and VinylSeptember 2, 2010 – February 6, 2011
This is the first museum exhibition to explore the culture of vinyl records within the history of contemporary art. Bringing together forty-one artists from around the world who have worked with records as their subject or medium, this groundbreaking exhibition examines the record’s transformative power in the years from the 1960s to the present. Through sound work, sculpture, installation, drawing, painting, photography, video, and performance, The Record combines contemporary art with outsider art
Outsider Art
The term outsider art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for art brut , a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture; Dubuffet focused particularly on art by insane-asylum inmates.While...
, audio with visual, fine art with popular culture, and established artists with those exhibiting in a U.S. museum for the first time. The 41 artists in the exhibition include Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson
Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...
, David Byrne
David Byrne
David Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...
, Janet Cardiff
Janet Cardiff
Janet Cardiff is a Canadian installation artist. Born in Brussels, Ontario in 1957 Cardiff studied at Queen's University where she graduated in 1980. She also studied at the University of Alberta and graduated in 1983. She works in collaboration with her partner George Bures Miller. Cardiff and...
, William Cordova, Jeroen Diepenmaat, Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.-Life:Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed...
, Jack Goldstein
Jack Goldstein
Jack Goldstein was a Canadian born, California-based performance and conceptual artist turned painter in the 1980s art boom.-Early life and education:...
, Taiyo Kimura, Ralph Lemon
Ralph Lemon
Ralph Lemon was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Lemon has been classified as many things; an African American dancer, a choreographer, company director, a writer and a visual artist but he chooses to categorize himself as a conceptualist. He was raised in a religious environment where as a child...
, Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay is a Swiss-American visual artist and composer.Marclay's work explores connections between sound, noise, photography, video, and film...
, Mingering Mike
Mingering Mike
Mingering Mike is a fictitious funk and soul recording artist created in the late 1960s as the subject of works of album art by a young Mike Stevens. More recently, Mingering Mike was rediscovered by law firm investigator Dori Hadar and his friend Frank Beylotte, who came across the art work at a...
, Dave Muller, Vik Muniz
Vik Muniz
Vicente José de Oliveira Muniz, known as Vik Muniz , is a visual artist living in New York City.-Early career:Muniz began his career as a sculptor in the late 1980s after relocating from Brazil to Chicago and later to New York. His early work grew out of a post-Fluxus aesthetic and often involved...
, 9th Wonder
9th Wonder
Patrick Douthit , better known as 9th Wonder is a hip hop record producer, record executive, DJ, professor, and lyricist from Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A. He began his career as the main producer for the hip hop group Little Brother, and has also worked with Mary J...
, DJ Rekha
DJ Rekha
DJ Rekha is a London-born musician, DJ, producer, curator, and activist. She has been credited with pioneering Bhangra music in North America...
, Robin Rhode
Robin Rhode
Robin Rhode is a South African artist, born 1976 in Cape Town, South Africa, now based in Berlin, Germany. In 1998, he obtained a diploma in Fine Art from Technikon Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, followed by a postgraduate program at the South African School of Film, Television and...
, Dario Robleto
Dario Robleto
Dario Robleto is an American conceptual artist who lives and works in Houston, Texas. Robleto received his BFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio in 1997 and has subsequently served as an artist in residence at several institutions including the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, the California...
, Ed Ruscha, Malick Sidibe
Malick Sidibé
Malick Sidibé is Malian photographer noted for his black-and-white studies of popular culture in the 1960s in Bamako. He was born in Soloba, Mali and completed his studies in design and jewelry in the École des Artisans Soudanais in Bamako...
, Xaviera Simmons, Su-Mei Tse
Su-Mei Tse
Su-Mei Tse is a Luxembourg musician, artist and photographer. Her work combines photography, video, installations and music. In 2003, she received the Golden Lion award at the Venice Biennale for the best national participation.-Early life:...
, and Carrie Mae Weems
Carrie Mae Weems
Carrie Mae Weems is an award-winning photographer and artist. Her photographs, films, and videos have been displayed in over 50 exhibitions in the United States and abroad and focus on serious issues that face African Americans today, such as racism, gender relations, politics, and personal identity...
. The exhibition is curated by Trevor Schoonmaker.
Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool
February 7, 2008 – July 13, 2008
This exhibit is the first career painting retrospective of renowned American artist Barkley L. Hendricks
Barkley L. Hendricks
Barkley L. Hendricks is a contemporary American painter who has made pioneering contributions to black portraiture and conceptualism. While he has worked in a variety of media and genres throughout his career , Hendricks' best known work takes the form of life-sized painted oil portraits...
. Born in 1945 in Philadelphia, Hendricks' unique work resides at the nexus of American realism and post-modernism, a space somewhere between portraitists Chuck Close and Alex Katz and pioneering black conceptualists David Hammons and Adrian Piper. He is best known for his stunning, life-sized portraits of people of color from the urban northeast. Cool, empowering and sometimes confrontational, Hendricks' artistic privileging of a culturally complex black body has paved the way for today's younger generation of artists who are deeply indebted to him. This exhibition of Hendricks' paintings includes work from 1964 to the present. The exhibition will travel to the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Santa Monica Museum (Los Angeles,)the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia, and the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. There is a definitive full-color exhibition catalogue with over 160 reproductions, edited by the Nasher Museum's curator of contemporary art Trevor Schoonmaker.
El Greco to Velazquez: Art during the Reign of Philip III
August 21, 2008 – November 9, 2008
The Nasher Museum collaborated with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, attracting over one million visitors a year. It contains over 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas...
to present this groundbreaking exhibition – the first in the US to focus on Spanish art of the period between 1598 and 1621. The show examines a fascinating period bookended by the two giants of Spanish painting: the late works of El Greco
El Greco
El Greco was a painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" was a nickname, a reference to his ethnic Greek origin, and the artist normally signed his paintings with his full birth name in Greek letters, Δομήνικος Θεοτοκόπουλος .El Greco was born on Crete, which was at...
and the early paintings of Velázquez
Diego Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...
. The exhibition is the culmination of 20 years of research by Sarah Schroth, the Nasher Museum's senior curator.
This exhibition includes some 120 paintings, sculptures and decorative art pieces, representing 20 artists. The masters will be seen in context with lesser-known artists working during this time in Spain. The show will bring together works of art from museums around the world, some of which rarely travel outside of their countries, creating a unique opportunity for American audiences. Key loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
, the Museo del Prado
Museo del Prado
The Museo del Prado is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It features one of the world's finest collections of European art, from the 12th century to the early 19th century, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection, and unquestionably the best single collection of...
, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, and the National Gallery of Art
National Gallery of Art
The National Gallery of Art and its Sculpture Garden is a national art museum, located on the National Mall between 3rd and 9th Streets at Constitution Avenue NW, in Washington, DC...
, among other institutions and private lenders, were secured.