Press Releases

Madison Museum of Contemporary Art
Announces Upcoming Exhibitions and Major Events

MADISON, WI—The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) is a nonprofit, independent organization that exists to exhibit, collect, preserve, and interpret modern and contemporary art. The museum’s 60,000-square-foot home, which opened in 2006, was designed by architect Cesar Pelli and made possible by the generosity of W. Jerome Frautschi. MMoCA features exhibitions by regional, national, and international artists, and a permanent collection of approximately 5,000 works.

Exhibitions at MMoCA are free and open to the public. All information in this advance release is subject to change.

From Nature: Realist Works in MMoCA’s Permanent Collection
Through August 15, 2010
From Nature: Realist Works in MMoCA’s Permanent Collection is the last in a three-part series of exhibitions that surveys the major styles of modernism in the visual arts. Abstract and expressionist styles, previously examined in the series, have little precedent in western art. A modern realist style, however, has evolved as a series of personal elaborations on the Renaissance tradition. Although based upon perceptual observations of the world, with the artist “working from nature,” modernist realism distinguishes itself from past practice. The artist may, for example, simplify detail, create irrational juxtapositions to produce a “magic realism,” or derive works from the sharp-focused realism of photographs.

From Nature includes paintings, prints, pastels, watercolors, sculpture, and photographs. Thomas Hart Benton, Jacob Epstein, Janet Fish, Sylvia Mangold, Henri Matisse, Philip Pearlstein, Edward Weston, and Andrew Wyeth are among the artists represented.

The exhibition is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and is on view in the museum’s Henry Street Gallery.

Wisconsin Triennial
Through August 15, 2010
The 2010 Wisconsin Triennial is the museum’s twelfth survey of artists living and working in the state. Forty-two individuals and two pairs of artists working in collaboration are represented in the exhibition, which is installed in the museum’s lobby, State Street Gallery, New Media Gallery, second floor landing, and main galleries. The exhibition represents the varied artistic directions Wisconsin-based artists explore on a daily basis. Mediums include drawing, film, installation, painting, performance, photography, video, and works on paper.

Complementary programming includes an extensive series of lectures and gallery talks in Madison and other areas of the state; a Wisconsin Triennial blog featuring images, videos, recorded commentary from participating artists, and curatorial notes; and the museum’s first-ever cell-phone tour.

The Wisconsin Triennial is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.

Then and Again: A Public Project by Nicolas Lampert
Through September 26, 2010
Drawing on the city’s long tradition of politically charged graphic design in public settings, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art presents Then and Again: A Public Project by Nicolas Lampert. The exhibition, comprised of six signs created by Lampert, commemorates important institutions in Madison’s recent history: Freedom House, Hotel Washington, Lysistrata Restaurant, Mifflin Street Co-op, O’Cayz Corral, and Whole Earth Co-op. Each of these organizations contributed to the city’s reputation for political and cultural activism.

The exhibition is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and is on view in outdoor locations in downtown Madison.

True Self: The Search for Identity in Modern and Contemporary Art
August 18, 2010–Summer 2011
The notion of the “self,” the essential quality that makes a person distinct from all others, is a core theme in modern and contemporary art. Its primary formats are the portrait and self-portrait, which focus on the identity and psychology of the model. For the artist, the true self is fluid, not fixed; layered, not clearly evident. The true self is both innate and determined by experience and culture. Never consistent, it is often self-contradictory.

True Self: The Search for Identity in Modern and Contemporary Art explores the ways artists have understood and conveyed the essence of the self—through facial expression, body language, dress, and the particulars of setting—in a selection of paintings, sculpture, prints, and photographs. Drawn from MMoCA’s permanent collection, the exhibition lists a broad range of artists, including Thomas Hart Benton, Sonya Clark, Chuck Close, Käthe Kollwitz, Alfred Leslie, Diego Rivera, Cindy Sherman, Hollis Sigler, Raphael Soyer, and Ida Wyman.

True Self is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and will be on view in the museum’s Henry Street Gallery.

Focus/Madison: Works from the Permanent Collection
August 28–November 14, 2010
Context, setting, and place define much of our thinking. This is especially true for artists who garner inspiration from the world around them. Focus/Madison examines works in the collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art that feature the city itself. Photographs, prints, and paintings by twelve artists are included in the exhibition and demonstrate a striking range of perspectives. Twenty-six Polaroids taken during the 1970s by Madison photographer Gary Knowles, for example, show the city at night and during the day: people drinking beer on the Union terrace or protesting in the street against racism and sexism. Demonstrating the city’s political focus during an earlier era, John Steuart Curry’s Progressive Party Rally imagines the events organized by the leftist political party of the early twentieth century.

Artists in the exhibition also include Gibson Byrd, Dennis Church, Warrington Colescott, Gregory Conniff, Douglas Edmunds, Marshall Glasier, Terry Husebye, Allan Janus, Dana Van Horn, and Paul Vanderbilt.

Focus/Madison is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and will be on view in the museum’s State Street Gallery.

Clayton Brothers: Inside Out
September 12, 2010–January 2, 2011
The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art will present the first major museum exhibition dedicated to the bold, colorful drawings, paintings, and sculptures of Rob and Christian Clayton. The Clayton Brothers collaborate closely to construct objects that are both narrative and deeply personal. Front and center are the unique people, animals, and places that occupy the outskirts of the American psyche. These works are created in an obsessively rich manner and often incorporate related audio elements.

The Clayton Brothers, who live and work in Los Angeles, California, have had solo exhibitions in Los Angeles, New York, Miami, Houston, and Beijing, and have participated in group exhibitions around the world.

Clayton Brothers: Inside Out is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and will be on view in the museum’s main galleries.

Gallery Night
October 1, 2010
Organized each spring and fall by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Gallery Night features exhibition openings, special events, demonstrations, and refreshments at venues throughout the city.

Arts Ball
November 6, 2010
Each fall, art lovers gather to dance and dine in support of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the Madison Symphony Orchestra. Arts Ball 2010--the 40th anniversary of this Madison institution—is, as always, an occasion to build and renew friendships while contributing to the continued financial health of both institutions.

Holiday Art Fair
November 19–November 21, 2010
The Art League of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art will again join forces with Overture Center for the Arts to present a greatly expanded Holiday Art Fair on November 19-21, 2010. This long-time Madison tradition, which features art and gourmet vendors, seasonal decorations, entertainment, and a sale of “rediscovered treasures” against a backdrop of stunning contemporary architecture, provides a perfect holiday shopping opportunity for Madison and surrounding communities. Holiday Art Fair 2010 will include 90+ vendors in spaces within the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (227 State Street) and Overture Center for the Arts (201 State Street).

Shirin Neshat: Rapture
December 11, 2010–March 6, 2011
Projected on opposing walls, Shirin Neshat’s seminal video Rapture (1999) simultaneously presents the male and female experience in Iran, casting them as separate realities. As men wearing casual Western clothing traverse the cobbled stones of an ancient Iranian city, women in full-length black chadors cross a barren desert landscape. Other scenes show homosocial interactions that mirror and deflect one another: men pray; women chat or wash clothes.

Neshat, who was born and raised in Iran but has lived as an expatriate in New York for decades, references Persian, Asian, and Western art traditions in her films. With probing insight, sensitivity, and longing, Rapture presents, for Western eyes, the complexities of life and gender politics in Iran.

Rapture will be on view in the museum’s State Street Gallery. It is on extended loan from The Art Institute of Chicago.

Shinique Smith: Menagerie
January 22–May 8, 2011
In her first large-scale museum exhibition, multimedia artist Shinique Smith will build on previous museum installations to present a major exhibition that includes works on paper, paintings, and three-dimensional works from the breadth of her career. Dissolving the arbitrary division between objects, Smith will unify her works with the surrounding architectural space. Trained as an art educator as well as a visual artist, Smith will also work with Madison high school students to create a site-specific work for the exhibition; this work will be tied directly to the objects and ephemera of the Madison community.

Born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland, Smith garners inspiration from the world around her. Riffing on found images and objects--from photographs of teen heart throbs to old t-shirts—Smith creates large-scale installations, collages, and drawings. Some of her works combine calligraphic lines with expressions derived from everyday materials; an example is Juice on the Loose, a work she created using household bleach on denim. Other works incorporate large bundles of discarded clothing, as with Their First Bundle which shows floral print shirts bound by flannel button-downs to reference couples and shared items. Often arranged by color, these kinds of works play on explorations of color by canonical artists, while also commenting on the detritus of our consumer society. Using positive and contemplative associations, Smith’s works probe the contradictory underpinnings of our world and focus the viewer’s attention on aesthetics, style, and meaning.

Shinique Smith: Menagerie is organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, in association with the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, and will be on view in MMoCA’s main galleries.

Young at Art
March 13–May 15, 2011
Young at Art presents works of art by Madison Metropolitan School District students in kindergarten through Grade 12. The exhibition is the result of a long-standing collaboration between the museum and the school district’s fine arts department. In preparing for the exhibition, each of Madison’s public school art teachers was invited to submit up to three works created by his or her students. This process yields a full range of technique, subject matter, and media, including drawing, painting, collage, photography, sculpture, jewelry, ceramics, fiber, and computer-generated art.

This exhibition is organized by the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art and the Madison Metropolitan School District and is on view in MMoCA’s State Street Gallery.

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Hours at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art are Tuesday–Thursday (noon–5 pm); Friday (noon–8 pm); Saturday (10 am–8 pm); and Sunday (noon–5 pm). The museum is closed on Mondays.

Admission to exhibitions at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art is free of charge. MMoCA is supported through memberships and through generous contributions and grants from individuals, corporations, agencies, and foundations. Important support is also generated through auxiliary group programs; special events; rental of the museum’s lobby, lecture hall, and rooftop garden; and sales through the Museum Store.

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