Mediaboss Marketing

Photo by: Heather Coit/The News-Gazette

Katie Koca Polite, assistant curator and publications specialist at Krannert Art Museum, talks about the upcoming Works Progress Administration exhibit next to Edwin Boyd Johnson's 1934 'Mural Painting' last week at the museum in Champaign.

Image

Image

Image

Image

Image

CHAMPAIGN There is no relief program for artists as well-known as the Works Progress Administration Federal Art Project during the Great Depression, it put some 10,000 artists and craftsmen to work.

They created thousands of paintings, lithographs, sculptures and other pieces that often depicted, in American Regionalism style, Americans at work, along with their hopes and dreams.

Starting Thursday evening, visitors to Krannert Art Museum will be able to view 45 of the 575 New Deal artworks allocated to the museum last century in an exhibition titled "Enough to Live On: Art from the WPA."

"Allocation means they are in our collection and we maintain them, but we don't own them," said Krannert's Katie Koca Polite, who curated the exhibition, on view through April 22. "They're basically a super-long loan."

And the University of Illinois campus museum can't be sure how much longer it will be able to keep the WPA art.

"In the last few years, the government asked us for an inventory of all the allocations," Polite said. "The government could come in and say, 'We want those back.' I don't think President Trump will really authorize that, but you don't know."

The works on view at Krannert include paintings, works on paper, lithographs, woodblock prints, sculptures and a brass repousse an image hammered into relief from the reverse side of the metal.

One of the most outstanding is "Mural Painting," likely a study by artist Edwin Boyd Johnson for a mural he would create.

It features female figures holding objects such as a baby and a golden egg and a man wielding a hammer. Behind them are smokestacks, and airplanes in the sky.

Johnson worked for the WPA from 1935 to '43, creating mainly murals, among them "The Old Days" in the Tuscola Post Office.

"Mural Painting" looks particularly good, having been restored and cleaned by Restoration Division, an art-restoration company in Chicago.

Johnson and other artists who worked for the federal program were given broad guidelines by Holger Cahill, national director of the Federal Art Project.

He wanted to promote the styles of American Regionalism, showing average Americans at work or in their everyday lives, and social realism, depicting the everyday but looking more at class structure and other social aspects, Polite said.

However, some European modernism crept into some of the WPA artworks. At least four pieces at Krannert show influences of surrealists Salvador Dali, a Spaniard, and Italian Giorgio de Chirico, as well as of German Expressionism.

However, they're accessible, as are all the WPA pieces. Because the art was often displayed in libraries, hospitals, public schools and federal, state and municipal buildings, the government wanted the art to appeal to the average person and not be over his or her head, Polite said.

Also opening Thursday evening at the museum:

"Land Grant," an exhibition on view through May 14 that pays tribute to the 150th anniversary of the UI. It was put together by students who were in a seminar on curatorial methods taught by UI art history Professor Terri Weissmann and Amy L. Powell, Krannert's curator for modern and contemporary art.

This eclectic exhibit features photos, paintings, documents, newspaper accounts, experimental projects and objects such as a concrete canoe painted by UI engineering students to resemble an ear of corn. Other objects speak to the indigenous who lived here before the university was established.

A focal point is the Billy Morrow Jackson painting "We the People: The Land Grant College Heritage," commissioned in the 1980s by the university for the president's office.

It features prominently portraits of Abraham Lincoln, Justin Morrill and Jonathan Baldwin Turner, who were instrumental in the Morrill Act that established land-grant colleges.

"Light and Movement in Sculpture," curated by Powell, is a small show, also on view through May 14, at the main entrance of the Kinkead Pavilion. It features light-and-kinetic sculptures from the 1960s and '70s; a few have an "op-art" look.

They were created by Fletcher Benton, Chryssa, Max Finkelstein, Richard Hunt, Josef Levi, James Libero Prestini and Earl Reiback.

New York performance artist's first solo presentation features five public events

CHAMPAIGN Krannert Art Museum will host the first solo museum presentation by performance artist Autumn Knight, the current artist-in-residence at New York City's The Studio Museum in Harlem.

Her first performance, "El Diablo y Cristo Negro," a comedic dialogue between the devil and black Christ, will be during the public opening from 6 to 7 p.m. Thursday of the new spring exhibitions at the museum.

"El Diablo y Cristo Negro" explores the relationship between good and evil, or the frenemy relationship between the devil and the black Christ. Joining her in that performance will be Xavier Roe, a University of Illinois theater student, and Chivas Michael, a New Orleans-based actor.

Krannert has given her a performance space at the museum called "In Rehearsal," from the idea that "she's always reworking ideas and presenting them in new formats," said Amy L. Powell, the curator of contemporary and modern art at the museum and the curator for Knight's exhibition.

"There's always this sense that the work isn't finished yet," Powell told the UI News Bureau. "We're getting a peek into her process. She's bringing this sense of rehearsal into the space."

The installation will include videos showing Knight's past work; some of the sources of her inspirations; and companion pieces. Her performances there will be scheduled intermittently throughout the semester.

Here are some of her public performances:

"Here and Now," 7:30 p.m. March 30, Krannert Art Museum. The conversation with Knight will include audience members and a licensed mental-health counselor.

Gallery conversation, 2 p.m. March 31, Krannert Art Museum. Knight and Powell will talk during an informal Q&A about Knight's work and "In Rehearsal."

"Lament," 7:30 p.m. April 13, UI Stock Pavilion, 1402 W. Pennsylvania Ave., U. The dance performance interprets addiction, class and mental illness, with Knight collaborating with Rebecca Ferrell, a choreographer and lecturer in the UI dance department, on the piece. It will feature Abijan Johnson, a Houston-based dance and movement therapist.

"An Experimental Freezing of a Room through Metaphorical Means," week of April 17, Activities and Recreation Center pool, 201 E. Peabody Drive, C. Knight will portray a figure of black motherhood against the soundtrack of the jury's decision to acquit George Zimmerman of murder in the death of Trayvon Martin.

If you go

What: The spring 2017 opening night of new exhibitions "Enough to Live On: Art from the WPA," "Land Grant," "Light and Movement in Sculpture" and performance artist Autumn Knight in rehearsal.

When: 6 to 7 p.m. today, with remarks at 6 p.m. by Kathleen Harleman, museum director and acting dean of the University of Illinois College of Fine and Applied Arts.

Where: Krannert Art Museum, 500 E. Peabody Drive, C.

Admission: Free; suggested donation of $3.

Read the original post:
(Dis)playing it cool: WPA exhibit headlines Krannert Art Museum season - Champaign/Urbana News-Gazette