Exhibition marks ninth installment of VantagePoint contemporary art series

Speed, precision, and danger are key elements of the exhibition VantagePoint IX – Janet Biggs: Going to Extremes, on view 5 November 2010 – 29 May 2011 at the Mint Museum Uptown. From a kayaker navigating threatening Arctic waters to a NASCAR pit crew racing against the clock, Biggs’ video subjects tend to lead her to extremes.

Janet Biggs has been creating and exhibiting videos and video installations for nearly 20 years. Examining themes of speed, precision, personal discipline, gender roles, spectatorship, and calculated risk, her videos capture the athleticism of performance juxtaposed with danger. A common thread within her subjects is their willingness to undertake extraordinary risks—even brushes with death—in pursuit of the sublime.

The exhibition will present four single channel videos: Duet (2010), Fade to White (2010), Vanishing Point (2009), and Airs Above the Ground (2007).

Biggs’ latest work, Duet, brings her into new territory. Focusing on the world of NASCAR, the artist partnered with Joe Gibbs Racing to shoot footage showing how auto racing’s wild popularity and position within consumer culture create both drama and heroism. Rather than focusing exclusively on the drivers, Biggs presents the speed, precision, and agility of the pit crews and reveals their extreme grace under pressure. Juxtaposing the pit crew footage with scenes of the cars racing around the track, the video examines the relationships between power and precision, and chaos and control, which are central to the search for speed. Biggs also integrates sound and video footage of a violinist and vocalist performing The Flower Duet from the opera Lakmé by Léo Delibes. Duet will be screened for the first time as part of the exhibition. Commissioned from the artist, the video will remain in The Mint Museum’s permanent collection.

Fade to White follows the journey of Audun Tholfsen, a guide and crew member on the Nooderlicht, a schooner that took Biggs to the Arctic in 2009. The video reveals the myth of the solitary male explorer by focusing on Tholfsen’s trials as he navigates the ship, and sometimes a kayak, through threatening, iceberg-filled seas. Loss and change are implicit in the video’s title, which refers to an editing technique used to evoke death or transcendence. Biggs integrates the striking Arctic imagery with sound and video footage of countertenor John Kelly, whose age, androgyny, and mournful voice parallel the vanishing Arctic landscape and signal the waning of male dominance.

With its title taken from Richard Sarafian’s 1971 road movie, the video Vanishing Point looks at the ways in which an individual can vanish. Combining images of motorcycle speed record holder Leslie Porterfield on Utah’s Bonneville Salt Flats with footage of Harlem’s Addicts Rehabilitation Center Gospel Choir performing a song written specifically for the video, Vanishing Point examines the struggle to maintain one’s identity, the role of those who witness that identity vanishing, and a search for freedom that can end in either destruction or transcendence.

Airs Above the Ground examines the performance of youth, equating age with pageantry and masquerade. An ethereal image of an inverted, weightless synchronized swimmer suspended in slow motion reveals the strenuous effort and dedication behind the appearance of youthful ease. The hyper-stylized gestures and affected costume of the athlete belie the power, agility, and strength required to make every action appear graceful. Biggs suggests that youth is bound by social constraints that set some individuals on a search for impossible perfection or transcendence.

Biggs will give a lecture discussing the inspiration behind her work on Thursday, 4 November at 7:00 p.m. at the Mint Museum Uptown. The lecture is free and open to the public.

VantagePoint IX – Janet Biggs: Going to Extremes is underwritten by the Goodrich Foundation and is supported, in part, by a Special Project Grant from the Arts & Science Council. VantagePoint is the Museum’s contemporary art series that emphasizes new developments in recent art practice. For more information call 704.337.2000.

Grant will help fund Museum’s school programs and community outreach

The Mint Museum has received a $90,000 grant from The Hearst Foundation, Inc. to support educational programming for children and youth, as well as the teachers who instruct them in art. This is Hearst’s third grant to the Mint. The timing of this renewed support is particularly key as the institution is completing a major expansion project that entails opening a new uptown Charlotte facility.

The grant will help fund the myriad of classes, tours, student art exhibitions, workshops and numerous other learning activities that annually impact approximately 40,000 children and youth, many of whom are underserved and at-risk. The hundreds of teachers who benefit from enrichment opportunities at the Mint each year pass on what they learn to thousands of students, thereby bolstering the K-12 school art curriculum. The high-quality, inclusive educational opportunities offered by the museum are intrinsic to the institution’s mission and give young people a valuable introduction to the arts, instilling in many of them a lifelong interest in and understanding of art and craft.

Research has shown that students who participate in rigorous arts programs are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement, and four times more likely to participate in a math or science fair, among other accomplishments. The Mint bolsters the arts in schools by serving as a parallel classroom for K-12 students and an educational resource for teachers. Its collections, exhibitions and programs encourage a thoughtful exploration of human culture that supplements classroom learning in ways that are accessible to students of various ages, socio-economic levels, ethnicities and learning styles.

“It is an honor to receive special recognition and support once more from a national enterprise such as the Hearst Foundation,” said Director of Education Cheryl Palmer. “This grant will help inaugurate the new Mint Museum Uptown and allow us to offer many more educational programs for children, families and schools.”

The Mint Museum Uptown will open in October 2010. One of the centerpieces of this facility will be a 1,845-square-foot Family Gallery, designed as a fun place for families with children ages 18 months to 10 years to feel comfortable with art as they explore activities together. It will incorporate works of art from the permanent collection and hands-on activities, and serve as a family-oriented introduction to the entire museum.

The new museum will feature two studio classrooms to expand the number of painting, drawing, mixed media and clay classes offered for teachers, teens, children and adults. In addition to the studio classrooms, there will be small classrooms on the two gallery levels in the new facility for simple hands-on activities with tour groups. A larger auditorium, educational technology in the galleries, reading areas, and flexible public spaces inside and outside on terraces will be important components to reach a broad audience.

The charitable goals of the Hearst Foundations reflect the philanthropic interests of William Randolph Hearst. The Hearst Foundation, Inc. was founded in 1945 by publisher/philanthropist William Randolph Hearst. In 1948, Mr. Hearst established the California Charities Foundation, renamed the William Randolph Hearst Foundation in 1951. Both Foundations are national private philanthropies operating independently from The Hearst Corporation.

The Hearst Foundations are national philanthropic resources for organizations and institutions working in the fields of education, health, culture and social service. Their goal is to ensure that people of all backgrounds have the opportunity to build healthy, productive and inspiring lives. The Hearst Foundations support programs that enrich the lives of young people by engaging them in cultural activities, primarily through arts-in-education programs. Grants are awarded to major institutions and community organizations in the arts and sciences that address the lack of arts programming in pre-kindergarten through 12th grade curricula by providing comprehensive, on-site and/or outreach education activities.

The two Foundations are managed as one entity, sharing the same funding guidelines, leadership, and staff. Staff based in the headquarters in New York City review all proposals from organizations located east of the Mississippi River, and staff in the San Francisco office review requests from organizations west of the Mississippi.

Portrait by American master donated to Museum as part of major collections campaign

The Mint Museum has acquired an early 19th century portrait by John Singleton Copley, one of the greatest and most influential painters in colonial America. St. Cecilia, a Portrait (Mrs. Richard Crowninshield Derby) (1803) is the first painting by Copley to enter the Mint’s collection. The painting and its original period frame were donated by longtime Museum supporters Dr. and Mrs. Henry C. Landon III of Wilmington, N.C.
Born in Boston in 1738, John Singleton Copley quickly rose to become the preeminent portrait painter in the American colonies. He began to garner critical attention in 1766 when his portrait of Henry Pelham was exhibited to great acclaim in London. In 1774, the artist moved overseas permanently to further his career and escape the escalating conflict in America.

St. Cecilia, a Portrait portrays Martha Crowninshield Derby, an American expatriate living in London, as Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music. Surrounded by luxurious furnishings and wearing a fashionable empire-waist dress, Mrs. Derby demonstrates her musical talents by playing a harp—an instrument chosen to echo her graceful figure and emphasize her slender fingers—as she is gazed upon by adoring cherubs. Copley likely created this work in response to earlier versions of women posed as St. Cecilia by his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Measuring 92 by 58 inches, the painting is one of the largest paintings in the American art collection. Currently on display at the Mint Museum of Art on Randolph Road, it will be reinstalled as part of the Museum’s holdings of Colonial and Federal portraiture in the new Mint Museum Uptown, scheduled to open in October 2010.

The Mint Museum acquired the Copley painting as part of its collections campaign to enhance its holdings through donations of significant artworks or financial contributions dedicated to acquiring masterworks of art and craft. Through the collections campaign, to date the Mint has acquired more than 200 works in its artistic focus areas of American Art, Art of the Ancient Americas, Contemporary Art, Craft + Design, Decorative Arts and Historic Costume & Fashionable Dress.

The Mint Museum’s major expansion project includes the construction of a new 145,000-square-foot facility as part of uptown Charlotte’s Wells Fargo Cultural Campus and the reinstallation of the historic Mint Museum of Art. The new facility will house collections of American Art, Contemporary Art and Craft + Design. Following the opening of the new location, collections at the Mint Museum of Art will be reinstalled and feature collections in Ceramics, Art of the Ancient Americas, and Historic Costume & Fashionable Dress.

Craft museum marks its move to the new Mint Museum Uptown with a farewell party

Charlotteans can enjoy their own “Night at the Museum” to bid farewell to the original location of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design. The Mint Museum will invite the public for a final walk-through of the craft museum’s original location (220 North Tryon Street) at a “Last Look Friday” event, before relocating its collections to the new Mint Museum Uptown scheduled to open in October 2010. Enjoy a night of live entertainment, art activities and refreshments in an empty museum on Friday, March 5, 6:00 – 10:00 p.m.

The celebration will honor the art collections and past exhibitions housed at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, and provide a sneak preview of new additions at the Mint Museum Uptown. Guests of all ages can participate in do-it-yourself art activities from sculpture to interactive photography sessions, observe artist demonstrations and dance to live music by The Swingin’ Richards.

Prior to the celebration, guests can participate in the Last Look Friday Photography Contest by submitting photographs of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design. Photos will be judged by museum staff in the categories of “Most Artistic Image,” “Best Dressed Museum-Goers” or “Best Architectural Image,” with winners to be announced the evening of the event.  All submissions will be projected on a slideshow in the galleries. The public can submit photographs by uploading them to The Mint Museum’s Facebook page (www.facebook.com/mintmuseum) or by e-mailing them to elizabeth.isenhour@mintmuseum.org. The deadline for submissions is March 4 at midnight.

The Mint Museum’s expansion project includes the construction of a five-story facility in uptown Charlotte and the reinstallation of the historic Mint Museum Randolph. When the expansion is complete, The Mint Museum’s total combined square footage will grow by more than 60 percent, allowing more opportunities to showcase works from the permanent collection and better accommodate significant traveling exhibitions. The new Mint Museum Uptown will house the collections from the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, as well as significant collections of American art, contemporary art, and a selection of European art from the Mint Museum Randolph.

In-kind grant will enhance Museum’s roadside signage

The Mint Museum has been awarded an “Identifying Our Community” in-kind grant of signage services by SouthWood Corporation of Charlotte. The $5,000 grant from SouthWood includes the design, fabrication and installation of new signage at the Mint Museum of Art on Randolph Road.

“We are delighted to have been chosen to receive SouthWood’s ‘Identifying Our Community’ grant,” said Executive Director Phil Kline. “The new signage will provide the Mint Museum of Art with a much improved roadside sign reflecting our current design initiatives.”

The timing of the signage is ideal, as the collections at the Mint Museum of Art will be reinstalled following the opening of the Mint Museum Uptown in October 2010. A new sign will serve as a reflection of all the changes that will take place within the historic United States Mint structure.

The award to The Mint Museum is the fifth in a series of grants to be awarded by SouthWood to nonprofits in the Charlotte area. SouthWood’s “Identifying Our Community” grant program will award a total of $100,000 worth of signage and services to eligible nonprofit organizations to install new signage or upgrade existing signage to create a positive environment. Grants will be awarded in $5,000 increments to a different nonprofit every quarter.

Public invited to experience art, music, and film at the Mint Museum Uptown

The Mint Museum announces the 2010-11 program schedule for its First Fridays and Let’s Get Reel series.

First Fridays is an ongoing evening event series held the first Friday of every month at the new Mint Museum Uptown (500 South Tryon Street). Each First Friday centers on a different theme and features hands-on art activities for all ages, live entertainment, gallery tours, and refreshments. Admission is free for Mint members and $10 for non-members. The 2010-11 First Fridays schedule is:

5 November – MoveMint, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
3 December – EmbellishMint, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
7 January – EnjoyMint, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
4 February – EndearMint, 6:00-11:00 p.m.
4 March – StateMint, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
1 April – AdornMint, 6:00-11:00 p.m.
6 May – EmpowerMint, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
3 June – EleMint, 6:00-11:00 p.m.

Debuting in November, the Let’s Get Reel music and movies series will be held the second Tuesday of each month at the Mint Museum Uptown. Free live music starts at 6:00 p.m., followed by a movie screening at 7:00 p.m. Admission to the movie is free for Mint members and $5 for non-members.

Local, national, and international visitors take part in 24-hour celebration

The Mint Museum welcomed a record-breaking 17,000 visitors to its new facility in uptown Charlotte during its grand opening weekend on 1-3 October. The debut of the Mint Museum Uptown was accompanied by a 24-Hour Grand Opening celebration, featuring free admission, live entertainment, and art activities for all ages.

“The enthusiastic support and overwhelmingly positive feedback we received from members and guests made our opening weekend a tremendously rewarding experience to me and to the entire staff, who worked tirelessly to make this event such a success,” said Executive Director Dr. Kathleen V. Jameson. “Even more satisfying was observing the galleries full of diverse audiences experiencing the Mint’s collections in new ways, and seeing a subsequent spike in memberships over the weekend.”

The 24-Hour Grand Opening celebration kicked off on 1 October with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 5:00 p.m., followed by a variety of activities for all ages during the next 24 hours. Friday evening events included an inaugural First Friday celebration and a Takeover Friday party, featuring music and dancing into the wee hours. Saturday activities included a Pecha Kucha Night Charlotte, museum tours, films, artist demonstrations, a poetry slam, and art-making activities for children and families in the Lewis Family Gallery. Special partnerships with Komen Charlotte Race for the Cure and the Charlotte Area Bicycle Alliance allowed hundreds of people to walk, run, and bike to the Museum during opening weekend.

“After years of planning and fine-tuning the educational components of the new Mint, we were thrilled to see children and families diving into the interactive art stations in the Lewis Family Gallery,” said Director of Education Cheryl Palmer. “The excitement exhibited by our young patrons reinforces our belief that arts education is a critical need in the community.”

During the week preceding the grand opening, the Mint Museum Uptown held several “soft openings” for approximately 1,500 supporters, members, and community partners. Net sales from the Museum Shop during opening weekend totaled more than $10,000.

Designed by noted architectural firm Machado and Silvetti Associates of Boston, the Mint Museum Uptown was the final attraction to open in the Levine Center for the Arts, located in the heart of Charlotte’s business district. Housing the internationally-renowned Mint Museum of Craft + Design, as well as American and contemporary art and select works from the European art collection, the 145,000-square-foot facility includes two full floors of galleries, each featuring 12,000 square feet of permanent collection space and 6,000 square feet of changing exhibition space. A dramatic multi-story atrium, named for the late Robert Haywood Morrison in honor of his foundation’s generous gift to the Museum, serves as a central hub of activity and features a 60- by 60-foot glass curtain wall offering spectacular views of the urban landscape. The building also includes a café, the Lewis Family Gallery, painting and ceramics studios, classrooms, a 240-seat auditorium, a Special Events Pavilion with outdoor terrace, and an expanded street-level Museum Shop featuring crafts of the Carolinas and showcasing merchandise that complements both the permanent collection and special exhibitions.

Following the opening of the Mint Museum Uptown, the Mint Museum Randolph, located in the historic Eastover neighborhood, will reinstall its galleries dedicated to the art of the ancient Americas, decorative arts, and historic costume, among others.

Sculptor was in residence at McColl Center for Visual Art and exhibited at The Mint Museum in Charlotte

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has named Elizabeth Turk, an artist with ties to the Charlotte cultural community, as one of 23 new MacArthur Fellows for 2010. Turk, a sculptor known for transforming marble into intricate, seemingly weightless works of art, was a 2003 Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Visual Art and presented her first solo museum exhibition VantagePoint III – Elizabeth Turk: The Collarsat The Mint Museum in 2004. Turk was recently in Charlotte to deliver Collar 21 to the Mint for presentation within the contemporary art galleries in the new Mint Museum Uptown, opening 1 October 2010.

“I cannot think of anyone more deserving of a MacArthur Fellowship than Elizabeth,” said Carla Hanzal, Curator of Contemporary Art at The Mint Museum. “Her ability to manipulate marble into such exquisite forms defies the medium’s rigid qualities and is nothing short of extraordinary. We are proud to share her impressive artwork with the public.”

“Elizabeth has a quiet, thoughtful, yet powerful sensibility,” said Suzanne Fetscher, President of McColl Center for Visual Art. “Her time with us was spent developing the concepts and execution for the “Collars.” At the time, she called our Center a “candy store” where artists can explore materials, tools and relationships with other artists and the community, which is our reason for being. It is wonderful to see our partnership with the Mint Museum reflected in this amazing recognition for Elizabeth.”

While her past artistic projects have involved works in metal, glass, and porcelain, as well as drawings, photography, and video, Turk has focused on marble in her major series of works. Inspired by the challenges the hard stone poses for an artist interested in rendering nature’s most delicate forms, she has achieved an extremely fine level of detail in an often-unforgiving substance. Employing a variety of electric grinders, files, and small dental tools with a dexterous touch, her technical virtuosity is on full display in “The Collars,” a series of sixteen painstakingly carved sculptures that explore a rich variety of organic and geometric patterns. The elaborate collars in this collection combine allusions to decorative motifs and the self-organizing systems of the natural world, drawing from lace-making and Elizabethan fashion as well as botanical, skeletal, and architectural structures. Continuing the theme of fragile, textile-like compositions with the strength and heft of stone, Turk creates a surprising sense of buoyancy and undulating movement in her recent series of marble ribbons suspended in midair. With these and other visually arresting feats of precision, Turk is pushing the physical limits of her material and reviving a classical medium for contemporary artistic exploration.

Turk will receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support from the MacArthur Foundation over the next five years. All Fellows were selected for their creativity, originality, and potential to make important contributions in the future.

145,000-square-foot facility will increase museum’s space by more than 60 percent

–October 1st marks a transformative moment for The Mint Museum. The debut of the new Mint Museum Uptown – one year prior to the institution’s 75th anniversary – will bring together the Mint Museum of Art and the Mint Museum of Craft + Design under one roof, double the permanent collection on view, and hone the institution’s ability to attract and organize major traveling exhibitions.

“The debt-free completion of the Mint Museum Uptown and the Levine Center for the Arts during a time of economic upheaval is a testament to Charlotte’s unwavering commitment to the arts and its long tradition of philanthropy,” said Executive Director Dr. Kathleen V. Jameson. “The scope of this ambitious cultural project is going to transform the way Charlotte lives and catapult the Mint to national and international significance.”

Building and Collections: Designed by noted architectural firm Machado and Silvetti Associates of Boston, the Mint Museum Uptown is the final attraction to open in the Levine Center for the Arts, located in the heart of Charlotte’s business district. In addition to the Mint, this development includes the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, and the John S. and James L. Knight Theater, along with corporate and retail facilities.

The 145,000-square-foot, five-story Mint Museum Uptown includes two full floors of galleries, each featuring 12,000 square feet of permanent collection space and 6,000 square feet of changing exhibition space. A dramatic multi-story atrium, named for the late Robert Haywood Morrison in honor of his foundation’s generous gift to the Museum, will serve as a central hub of activity and features a 60- by 60-foot glass curtain wall offering spectacular views of the urban landscape. The building also includes a café, the Lewis Family Gallery, painting and ceramics studios, classrooms, a 240-seat auditorium, a Special Events Pavilion with outdoor terrace, and an expanded street-level Museum Shop featuring crafts of the Carolinas and showcasing merchandise that complements both the permanent collection and special exhibitions. These amenities and special features will provide venues for hosting public programs that reinforce the Museum’s commitment to making art and education inspiring and accessible to the entire community.

Expanding The Mint Museum was one of the top priorities laid out in a master Cultural Facilities Plan developed by the Arts & Science Council of Charlotte/Mecklenburg County in 2003. The Mint Museum Uptown will house the internationally-renowned Mint Museum of Craft + Design, as well as American and contemporary art and select works from the European art collection.

Following the opening of the Mint Museum Uptown, the Mint Museum Randolph, located in the historic Eastover neighborhood, will reinstall its galleries dedicated to the art of the ancient Americas, decorative arts, and historic costume, among others.

The opening of the new facility marks a pivotal chapter in the Mint’s history and in Charlotte’s continued emergence as a cultural destination. The cultural facilities campaign to create the Levine Center for the Arts and facilitate other uptown cultural improvements met its $83 million goal.

New Programs: The Lewis Family Gallery at the Mint Museum Uptown will serve as a family-friendly introduction to the museum, offering a variety of engaging hands-on activities and opportunities for imaginative play. The Robert Haywood Morrison Atrium and James B. Duke Auditorium will offer such new programs as the Get Reel film/live jazz series. Two studio classrooms will expand the number of painting, drawing, mixed media, and clay classes offered for teachers, children, teens, and adults. In addition to these spaces, there will be small classrooms on the two gallery levels for hands-on activities with tour groups.

Newly-Commissioned Artwork: Under an initiative titled Project Ten Ten Ten, four international craft and design artists have been invited to create works for the Mint Museum of Craft + Design: Danny Lane (United States), Ted Noten (The Netherlands), Joseph Walsh (Ireland), and Hildur Bjarnadǿttir (Iceland). Six additional works of art will soon be commissioned from Tom Joyce, Cristina Córdova (both United States), Tetsunori Kawana (Japan), Kate Malone (Great Britain), Susan Point (Canada), and Ayala Serfaty (Israel). Project Ten Ten Ten will catapult the Mint Museum of Craft + Design to the highest level of artistic excellence through this extraordinary site-specific work.

The Mint Museum of Art has commissioned American artist Ken Aptekar to create a new interpretation of its 18th-century Portrait of Queen Charlotte to hang in the Mint Museum Uptown. The artist references historic works, imbuing them with contemporary meaning and inviting new dialogue. Titled Charlotte’s Charlotte, Aptekar’s painting reinterprets the Mint’s coronation portrait. Based largely on community input, the artist has created six panels which examine the British Queen’s diverse interests, vulnerability as a young woman, and African ancestry.

24-Hour Grand Opening: The Mint Museum Uptown opens its doors to the public on Friday, October 1st, with a 24-Hour Grand Opening celebration. The festivities kick off with a ribbon-cutting ceremony at 5:00 p.m., followed by a variety of activities for all ages during the next 24 hours. Events include a First Friday celebration from 5:30 to 9:00 p.m. (admission: members – free; non-members – $10) and a Takeover Friday party, featuring music and dancing into the wee hours (10:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m.; $10 admission). Other activities include a Pecha Kucha Night Charlotte, museum tours, films, artist demonstrations, a poetry slam with Q and the Concrete Generation, a live broadcast by Kiss Radio 95.1, and a special welcome for Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure participants on Saturday morning. Admission is free from 2:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at the Mint Museum Uptown and from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. at the Mint Museum Randolph on Saturday, October 2nd, and free at both facilities from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, October 3rd.

Inaugural Exhibitions: New Visions: Contemporary Masterworks from the Bank of America Collection (1 October 2010 – 17 April 2011). The Mint Museum and Bank of America will collaborate to present an exhibition comprising more than 60 contemporary works. New Visions highlights the strengths of Bank of America’s postwar collection and reveals a wide variety of artistic philosophies, approaches, and movements that extend into the early 21st century. The exhibition will feature paintings, sculptures, and works on paper from such major artists as Milton Avery, Jennifer Bartlett, Roger Brown, John Chamberlain, Janet Fish, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, Elizabeth Murray, Louise Nevelson, Jules Olitski, Edward Ruscha, Miriam Schapiro, and Frank Stella.

“We are grateful to Bank of America for this extraordinary opportunity to bring together and share with the public major works by some of the most important artists of our time,” said Curator of Contemporary Art Carla Hanzal, exhibition organizer. “While many corporations boast large art collections, it is rare to see such a comprehensive collection of contemporary and modern art that is both dynamic and historically significant. This show exemplifies the excellence and regional diversity that Bank of America’s collection is uniquely suited to reveal.”

New Visions: Contemporary Masterworks from the Bank of America Collection is organized by The Mint Museum, Charlotte, N.C., and provided by Bank of America Art in our Communities™ program.

Contemporary British Studio Ceramics: The Grainer Collection (1 October 2010 –13 March 2011). Drawn from the collection of Diane and Marc Grainer of suburban Washington, D.C., this exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of contemporary British studio ceramics ever assembled. Comprised of functional and sculptural objects made between the 1980s and 2009, the show features work by 100 artists either born or residing in Great Britain, including established “contemporary classics” like Lucie Rie and cutting-edge ceramicists such as Julian Stair, Kate Malone, Neil Brownsword, and Grayson Perry.

Rooted in the materiality of clay, a hallmark of studio pottery, the collection chronicles the recent history of Contemporary British Studio Ceramics. The exhibition begins with an overview of the earlier 20th century masters, then moves to works that demonstrate the two different strains of influence that informed contemporary makers – from the historicism of Bernard Leach and his successors to the refugee modernism embodied by Rie.

“The most thrilling quality of the contemporary British studio ceramics field is that it remains free from a defining aesthetic and cannot be tied together by one common visual thread,” said Annie Carlano, Director of Craft + Design and curator of the exhibition. “There has never been a comprehensive exhibition on either side of the pond about these objects. Building on the Mint’s internationally recognized collection of historic English ceramics, this exhibition allows us to explore a wider wealth of riches and continue the story from art pottery to clay art today.”

Contemporary British Studio Ceramics: The Grainer Collection is organized by The Mint Museum and sponsored by Duke Energy. It will be accompanied by a lavishly illustrated scholarly catalogue published by Yale University Press, London.

Kathleen Jameson to lead Museum’s expansion and reinstallation initiatives

The Mint Museum announced today the appointment of Kathleen V. Jameson, Ph.D., as its new Executive Director, following an extensive national search supported by Management Consultants for the Arts and a Board of Trustees search committee. Jameson succeeds Phil Kline, who will remain at the Museum as its President & CEO until his retirement on December 31. Jameson has served as Assistant Director, Programming, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, since 2008 and will assume her new position at the Mint on July 15, 2010.

“We are thrilled with the selection of Kathleen Jameson as our new Executive Director from such a talented pool of candidates,” said Beverly Smith Hance, Chair of The Mint Museum Board of Trustees. “Kathleen comes to us as an experienced and visionary arts leader with the proven skills to build upon the exceptional foundation that the Mint has established under Phil Kline’s direction. The decision that Phil made last year to retire and begin crafting a strategic succession plan will allow the Museum to undergo a smooth transition during this important period. We are grateful for his nine years of remarkable leadership and the lasting impact he leaves on the Charlotte cultural community.”

Jameson joins The Mint Museum at a key time in its history. The Museum is presently involved in a major expansion project, which includes the construction of a new 145,000-square-foot facility opening October 1 in uptown Charlotte and the reinstallation of the historic Mint Museum Randolph. Designed by noted architectural firm Machado & Silvetti of Boston, the Mint Museum Uptown will be part of the Wells Fargo Cultural Campus and will house noted collections of American Art, Contemporary Art and European Art, in addition to the world-renowned collections of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design.

During the transition period, Jameson and Kline will work closely together to achieve the objectives of opening the new facility and planning the reinstallation of the Randolph Road location. Jameson’s duties as Executive Director will include the day-to-day administration of museum affairs, as well as overseeing finance, human resources, curatorial and development initiatives in consultation with Kline. She will assume the title of President & CEO upon Kline’s retirement.

“I am honored to serve as the next Executive Director of The Mint Museum, and to help lead the institution through this extraordinary phase of its distinguished history,” said Jameson. “I have been deeply impressed by the Museum’s staff, leadership, donors and diverse audiences, and share the commitment to excellence that defines the Mint. Phil Kline’s strong leadership has brought the Museum to this exciting threshold, and I look forward to working together to debut the Mint Museum Uptown in October and the Mint Museum Randolph next year. I am excited to be part of the cultural renaissance taking place in Charlotte, and I am eager to begin to advance the leadership position of The Mint Museum in the community and on a national scale.”

Jameson brings a strong combination of curatorial expertise and programming, management and academic experience to the Mint. In her former position as Assistant Director, Programming, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, she directed the architect search and program development for a planned expansion. She previously served as the museum’s Director of Program Support from 2005 to 2008, when she was responsible for raising $15 million in support of development initiatives, and as Curatorial Assistant from 2004 to 2005 and 1998 to 2001, where she organized special and permanent collection exhibitions and conducted research for acquisitions, collections and exhibitions. Prior to her work at the MFAH, Jameson served as Research Associate for the Harold Weston Foundation and the Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake, N.Y., and as Scholar-in-Residence at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.

“Kathleen’s curatorial expertise and accomplished track record undoubtedly make her the right person to direct The Mint Museum into a new era,” said Phil Kline. “The Board of Trustees and I have been working carefully on my succession plans over the past 18 months, and I am delighted to welcome such a strong leader to advance our mission. Kathleen will be an outstanding Executive Director, and I am confident that she will lead the Museum and its exceptional staff to new levels of artistic excellence.”
Jameson holds a Ph.D. from the University of Delaware, a Master of Arts degree from the University of Louisville and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently completing her Masters of Business Administration degree at Rice University. An active member of the American Association of Museums, Jameson is co-organizing the Association’s 2011 Annual Meeting in Houston, and last year served as Governance and Nominating Committee co-chair of its Professional Interest Committee on Green Museums.

Funds will help support traveling exhibition of Romare Bearden works and Family Gallery resources

The Mint Museum has received two National Endowment for the Arts grants in the fiscal year 2010 funding cycle: a $100,000 American Masterpieces: Visual Arts Touring Grant and a $30,000 Access to Artistic Excellence Grant.

“The Museum is delighted to be awarded these generous grants, which will allow the public to more fully engage with our artworks, their themes and the traditions in which they were created,” said Kathleen Jameson, incoming Executive Director.  “The NEA has provided another extraordinary opportunity for the Mint to share its resources, and the timing of these grants is critical as we move forward with an expansion initiative, which will include new opportunities to showcase our Romare Bearden collection.”

The American Masterpieces: Visual Arts Touring Grant will support an exhibition entitled Romare Bearden: Southern Recollections, which will include approximately 75 works of art that span the career of this internationally renowned Charlotte-born artist (1911-1988). This is one of only five American Masterpieces Grants that were awarded to museums nationwide in the current funding cycle.

The exhibition and subsequent national tour will underscore not only Bearden’s artistic mastery, particularly in the technique of collage, but also his development of narrative and thematic explorations of his native South. Collages, paintings, watercolors and prints will be assembled from the holdings of the Mint (which holds the largest public collection of Bearden’s work) as well as other private and public collections. The exhibition, which will open on the centennial of Bearden’s birth, will examine how the South served as a source of inspiration throughout his career. This key theme has never before been explored in any previous exhibition or writings on the artist. Southern Recollections will include large thematic groupings which incorporate many works that refer to Bearden’s childhood home in rural Mecklenburg County.

The exhibition will debut next year at the new Mint Museum Uptown, which will open on October 1, 2010. After its run there (September 2, 2011-January 1, 2012), it is slated to be presented at two other venues.

The Access to Artistic Excellence grant will support key interactive components of the Mint Museum Uptown’s Family Gallery, as well as hands-on materials that will carry families from this unique space into the permanent collection galleries on two upper floors. The Family Gallery will provide an introduction to the collections through creative, collaborative play in a hands-on setting.

NEA funding will support the design and fabrication of two of five zones in the Family Gallery: Memories of Mecklenburg House, a three-dimensional play house based on a collage by Romare Bearden, and Imagination Station, a studio/exhibition zone stocked with art materials for drop-in art-making. Grant funds will also support the development, production and assessment of Gallery Connections, a set of materials to be utilized by families in the permanent collection galleries.

The narrative quality, powerful aesthetics and themes of community make Bearden’s work a natural for the Family Gallery. The museum tested a model of the Bearden house during Art Under Construction, an exhibition of prototypes presented in 2009 at ImaginOn and funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The house, which will be refurbished for use in the Family Gallery, drew enthusiastic responses from children who easily engaged in this make-believe and self-directed environment.

Although the Mint offers frequent classes, camps and family days, the Imagination Station zone will provide families with a creative hands-on opportunity anytime during regular museum hours. Gallery Connections will provide comfortable entry points for parents and children to continue their conversations in the more formal gallery spaces.

The NEA awarded 50 Access to Artistic Excellence Grants to museums across the country.

Mint Museum Uptown opens October 1, 2010 as part of Levine Center for the Arts

Mint Museum Executive Director Phil Kline announced today the inaugural exhibitions to be presented in conjunction with the new Mint Museum Uptown’s grand opening on October 1, 2010. They are New Visions: Contemporary Masterworks from the Bank of America Collection and Contemporary British Studio Ceramics: The Grainer Collection.

Designed by noted architectural firm Machado & Silvetti of Boston, the 145,000-square-foot Mint Museum Uptown will be part of the Levine Center for the Arts located in the heart of Charlotte’s business district. In addition to the Mint, the cultural campus includes the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, and the John S. and James L. Knight Theater, along with corporate, retail and restaurant facilities.

The Mint Museum Uptown will house the world renowned collections of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, as well as the American Art and Contemporary Art collections and selected works from the European Art collection. The latter three collections are moving from the Mint Museum Randolph. The new five-story facility will include two full floors of galleries, each featuring 12,000 square feet of permanent collection space and 6,000 square feet of changing exhibition space. A dramatic multi-story atrium, named for the late Robert Haywood Morrison in honor of his foundation’s gift to the Museum, will serve as a central hub of activity and features a 60- by 60-foot glass curtain wall offering spectacular views of the urban landscape. The building also includes a café, a Family Gallery, painting and ceramics studios, classrooms, a 240-seat auditorium, a Special Events Pavilion with outdoor terrace, and an expanded Museum Shop specializing in crafts of the Carolinas. These amenities and special features will provide inspiring venues for hosting public programs to reinforce the Museum’s dual priorities of making art and education experiences accessible to the community.

Following the opening of the new uptown location, the Mint Museum Randolph will maintain its current location in the historic Eastover neighborhood and execute a reinstallation plan of its galleries designed to showcase collections of Art of the Ancient Americas, Decorative Arts, and Historic Costume & Fashionable Dress, along with selections of African Art, Asian Art, Ceramics, Coins & Currency, European Art, Native American Art and Spanish Colonial Art.

“The opening of our new facility marks a pivotal chapter in the Mint’s history and in Charlotte’s emergence as a cultural destination,” said Executive Director Phil Kline. “We are thankful to the City of Charlotte, the Arts & Science Council, and our corporate, foundation and private donors who have committed funds and significant works of art towards this historic initiative. When our doors open in October, the public will have the unique opportunity to view never-before-seen works from our permanent collections, in addition to seeing two landmark inaugural exhibitions.”

Inaugural Exhibitions:

New Visions: Contemporary Masterworks from the Bank of America Collection, October 1, 2010 – April 17, 2011

The Mint Museum and Bank of America will collaborate to present an exhibition comprising over 60 works from the bank’s Art Collection. Widely regarded as one of the world’s finest corporate art collections, the Bank of America Collection is noted for its high quality, stylistic diversity, historical depth and attention to regional identity.

The exhibition contains a broad selection of regionally diverse practitioners and presents an extraordinary opportunity to experience significant works by some of the most visionary artists of the past decades. The exhibition will feature paintings, sculptures and works on paper from an array of artists, including Milton Avery, Jennifer Bartlett, Roger Brown, John Chamberlain, Janet Fish, Helen Frankenthaler, Sam Gilliam, John Marin, Elizabeth Murray, Louise Nevelson, Jules Olitski, Edward Ruscha, Miriam Schapiro and Frank Stella, among others.

Beginning with works from 1945, the exhibition highlights the strengths of Bank of America’s postwar collection and reveals a wide variety of philosophies, approaches and movements reaching into the early 1990s. Historically significant works focusing on intense color and geometry as an organizing principle, such as Frank Stella’s Damascus Gate and Ellsworth Kelly’s Black and White Triangle, reveal the monumental scale and rigorous structures of late 1960s through early 1970s Minimalism. Postminimalist works from the 1980s, such as Elizabeth Murray’s Split and Join and Jennifer Bartlett’s In the Garden, present a return to imagery, while still retaining defined formalist structures.

The vibrant and irreverent canvases of Ed Paschke and Roger Brown exhibit the influence of outsider art and Surrealism. This influence was a hallmark of the second generation Chicago Imagists, a regional offshoot of Pop Artists. The influence of popular culture and media fueled diverse works by Roy Lichtenstein, James Rosenquist, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Longo. Masterful paintings by some of California’s most heralded artists—including Edward Ruscha (Clock Speed), James Weeks (Ocean Park Studio) and Wayne Thiebaud (Dark Cake)—demonstrate a surprising and complex relationship between abstraction and realism. Deborah Butterfield’s cast lead horse sculpture, as well as Lynda Benglis’s biomorphic reliefs  and John Chamberlain’s steel assemblage, comprise some of the compelling sculptural works within the show.

“We are grateful to Bank of America for this extraordinary opportunity to bring together and share with the public major works by some of the most important artists of our time,” said Curator of Contemporary Art, and curator of the exhibition, Carla Hanzal. “While many corporations boast large art collections, it is rare to see such a comprehensive collection of contemporary and modern art that is both dynamic and historically significant. This show exemplifies the excellence and regional diversity that Bank of America’s collection is uniquely suited to reveal.”

New Visions: Contemporary Masterworks from the Bank of America Collection is organized by The Mint Museum, Charlotte, N.C., and provided by Bank of America Art in our Communities™ program. Through this program, Bank of America has converted its collection into a unique community resource from which museums and nonprofit galleries may borrow complete or customized exhibitions. By providing these exhibitions and the support required to host them, the program helps sustain community engagement and generate vital revenue for the nonprofits, creating stability in local communities. From 2008 to 2010, Bank of America will have loaned more than 30 exhibitions to museums internationally.

“Bank of America is committed to strengthening artistic institutions and in turn, the communities we serve,” said Charles Bowman, North Carolina and Charlotte Market President, Bank of America. “Our continued partnership with The Mint Museum is a further extension of our commitment, and we are honored to be part of this resurgence in the Charlotte arts community.”

In addition to this collaboration, The Mint Museum is also part of Bank of America’s Museums on Us™ program. Through this unique program, anyone with a Bank of America ATM, credit card or check card has the opportunity to gain free admission to more than 120 cultural institutions across the country, including the Mint, during the first Saturday and Sunday of each month.

Contemporary British Studio Ceramics: The Grainer Collection, October 1, 2010 – March 13, 2011

Drawn from the collection of Diane and Marc Grainer of suburban Washington, D.C., this exhibition is the first comprehensive survey of Contemporary British Studio Ceramics in the United States and Great Britain. Comprised of functional and sculptural objects made between the 1980s and 2009, the show features work by 100 artists either born or residing in Great Britain, including established “contemporary classics” like Lucie Rie and cutting-edge ceramicists such as Julian Stair, Kate Malone, Neil Brownsword, and Grayson Perry.

The Grainers are well-known in the United States as collectors of Studio Furniture and American craft in general, and as leaders in the craft community through their work with the Americans Crafts Council, the Furniture Society, Museum of Arts and Design, the James Renwick Alliance, and the Founders’ Circle, the national support group of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design. Their extensive and virtuoso collection of contemporary British ceramics is perhaps their greatest contribution to the field. Over a 30-year period, the Grainers’ keen connoisseurship skills and tenacity led them to acquire some of the very best work.

Rooted in the materiality of clay, a hallmark of studio pottery, the ceramic art featured in the exhibition chronicles the history of Contemporary British Studio Ceramics. Whether a pot or sculpture, the properties of the raw material, from its soft malleable texture to the alchemy of slips and glazes, and its propensity to melt and harden, are at the core of the artist’s passion. The exhibition begins with a recap of the earlier 20th century masters, then moves to works that demonstrate the two different strains of influence that informed contemporary makers—from the historicism of Bernard Leach and his successors to the refugee modernism embodied by Lucie Rie.

A plethora of “honest pots” highlights the straightforward, form-following-function vessels and platters of master potters such as Richard Batterham, Clive Bowen and Bill Marshall. The show then explores the sculptural forms of Gordon Baldwin, Ken Eastman and Nicholas Rena, moving on to the figurative and narrative compositions of Christie Brown, Claire Curneen and Phil Eglin, ending with a look at the most recent intersection of ceramic art, design and social commentary.

“The most thrilling quality of Contemporary British Studio Ceramics is that the field remains free from a defining aesthetic and cannot be tied together by one common visual thread,” said Annie Carlano, Director of Craft + Design and curator of the exhibition. “There has never been a comprehensive exhibition on either side of the pond about these objects. Building on the Mint’s internationally recognized collection of historic English ceramics, this exhibition allows us to explore a wider wealth of riches and continue the story from art pottery to clay art today.”

Contemporary British Studio Ceramics: The Grainer Collection will be accompanied by the eponymous book, published by Yale University Press. Academic and lavishly illustrated, it features contributions by Tanya Harrod, Glenn Adamson and Michelle Mickey, as well as an interview with Diane and Marc Grainer. Edited by Annie Carlano, this important publication underscores the Mint Museum of Craft + Design’s commitment to scholarly excellence. The exhibition is organized by The Mint Museum and sponsored by Duke Energy.

6th Annual Potters Market Invitational Returns with Fresh New Line-Up and Live Music

“When you buy something from the potter, you buy part of that person.”
Cynthia Bringle, potter

What says North Carolina better than handmade pottery and bluegrass music? The Delhom Service League of The Mint Museum is gearing up for the sixth year of its Potters Market Invitational. Pottery enthusiasts come from miles around to view and purchase the best and latest in ceramic art. Ceramics for sale range from traditional utilitarian pots to studio ceramics, including jewelry. Don’t know much about ceramics? The Potters Market is the best place to learn while talking to the individual potters about the scope and vision of their creations.

The sale takes place Saturday, September 11, 2010, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the lawn of the Mint Museum Randolph, located at 2730 Randolph Road in Charlotte. It will feature bluegrass music from fiddler Rose Spinks and banjo player Harry Taylor of the Glazed Over String Band. Tickets are $10 for adults ($8 after 2 p.m.); $5 for children 5-17; and free for children under 5. Ticket sales begin the day of the event at 9:30 a.m. The entry fee includes admission to the Mint Museum Randolph. Proceeds support The Mint Museum’s decorative arts collection. Box lunches are available for purchase from Delectables by Holly.

Many potters have called North Carolina home over the last few centuries. Natural clay deposits attracted potters of European descent starting in the late 18th century. Since then, North Carolina has become one of the country’s richest ceramic meccas, full of unique styles and forms. Each year, the Potters Market Invitational features 40 superb potters representing the state’s most important pottery-producing areas: Seagrove, the Piedmont, Catawba Valley and the mountains, including Penland and Asheville. Potters participate by selection on a rotating basis, giving shoppers access to a wide variety of artists from one year to the next.

Potters returning this year include: Ben Owen III, Donna Craven and Crystal King. Added to the 2010 line-up are a select group of up-and-coming potters known for their distinctive work which is gaining national attention. New potters participating this year include: Jeff Dean and Stephanie Martin, John and Scottie Post, Rob Pulleyn and Hiroshi Sueyoshi.

With North Carolina’s central role in American pottery and growing international reputation, the Mint Museum Randolph devotes special efforts to documenting the history of North Carolina ceramics through its historic ceramics collection. The 6th Annual Potters Market Invitational is presented by the Delhom Service League, an affiliate group of The Mint Museum. For more information, visit www.mintmuseum.org or call the front desk at 704.337.2000.

Renowned interior designer Bunny Williams will headline Symposium

The Mint Museum Auxiliary is pleased to announce its 57th Annual Room to Bloom Celebration, which will take place April 14-May 22, 2010. This fundraiser supports The Mint Museum and the opening of the new Mint Museum Uptown on October 1. Auxiliary members Cathy Austin and Margaret Switzer are serving as co-chairs of the 2010 celebration.

Room to Bloom kicks off April 14 with a Symposium held at the Charlotte Country Club (2465 Mecklenburg Avenue) from 9:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. featuring nationally acclaimed designer and author Bunny Williams. Her highly developed sense of style has established Williams as one of the world’s most renowned interior designers. She was inducted into the Interior Design Hall of Fame in 1996 and was awarded the “Design and Business Award” by the Edith Wharton Restoration in 2000. Today her design work is regularly featured in magazines such as Veranda, House Beautiful and Elle Décor. She is the author of On Garden Style, An Affair With A House and Point of View.

This year, Room to Bloom will also include a CommenceMINT Opening Night Celebration and a series of eight parties held in private homes around Charlotte. Special hosts will offer a limited number of reservations for guests to enjoy food, drinks and conversation in spectacular home and garden settings. From enjoying brunch in one of the city’s most beloved gardens to mingling over cocktails and dinner in a sophisticated modern home featuring museum-quality art, guests can experience fine dining while supporting one of the region’s oldest and most prestigious art institutions.

For those who are unable to attend or want to further support The Mint Museum, the celebration also includes a Room to Bloom dinner service, which will allow the public to savor a delicious meal at home provided by one of Charlotte’s top caterers. Each dinner will be delivered to your doorstep for as many people as you would like.

A complete list of dinner party location, hosts and sponsors is available on the Mint Museum Auxiliary Web site. Reservations are $50-$250 per person, depending upon location. All parties are by paid reservation, taken by mail only on a first-come, first-served basis. The response deadline for all events is March 10. To check party availability and download a reservation form, visit the Mint Museum Auxiliary Web site. For all other inquiries, please contact Ryann Fairweather by e-mail or phone at 704/337-2022.

Founded in 1956, the purpose of the Mint Museum Auxiliary is to provide financial support to and broaden public support for The Mint Museum. Over the past 50 years, the Auxiliary has grown from a small group of founding women to over 600 members, donating millions of dollars to The Mint Museum in the process. The Room to Bloom Celebration, formerly known as the Home and Garden Tour, is the Auxiliary’s largest annual fundraising effort, with 2010 marking the 57th annual event.

In addition, the Auxiliary sponsors an annual Fall Mint to be Yours Tag Sale (since 2007). Prior fundraising activities include opening and operating the Mint Museum Shop (1957 – 1998) and an annual Antique Show (1967 – 2004). An Endowment for Mint Museum Acquisitions (EMMA) was established by the Auxiliary in 1985.
Collectively, the Auxiliary’s annual fundraising efforts support The Mint Museum through acquisitions for and restoration of the permanent collection, exhibitions, and educational outreach programs for schoolchildren. Auxiliary members contribute to the success of these fundraisers and provide additional Mint support through other program and special event offerings.

The Mint Museum is currently undergoing an expansion project which includes the construction of a five-story facility in uptown Charlotte and the reinstallation of the Mint Museum Randolph. When the expansion is complete, The Mint Museum’s total combined square footage will grow by more than 60 percent, allowing more opportunities to showcase works from the permanent collection and accommodate significant traveling exhibitions. The new Mint Museum Uptown will house the collections from the Mint Museum of Craft + Design as well as significant collections of American Art, Contemporary Art and a selection of European Art from the Mint Museum Randolph.

Public program spotlights undergraduate research by local students

Six area undergraduate art history students will present their research papers at The Mint Museum’s 20th Annual Regional Collegiate Art History Symposium on Saturday, March 27 at 1:00 p.m. at the Mint Museum Randolph (2730 Randolph Road). From the works of a Renaissance engraver to music’s influence on the visual arts, the students’ papers explore works of art from the Mint’s diverse global collections, or artists represented within the collections.

Since 1990, the Symposium has had the distinction of being one of the country’s few forums that spotlight undergraduate art history research. After the students present their findings at the program, their research papers will become permanent, bound additions to The Mint Museum’s library. Both the program and the reception following are open to the public and free with museum admission.
The 2010 Symposium participants are:

• Olutomi Balogun, Senior at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Hometown: Concord, NC
Topic: Harlem Scene and Baggy Jeans: Reflections of Jazz and Hip-Hop on the Visual Arts

• Dottie Bryan, Senior at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Hometown: Raleigh, NC
Topic: Pieter van der Heyden’s Autumn (1570) and Corresponding Works from the Four Winds Series

• Catherine Carlisle, Senior at Queens University
Hometown: Columbia, SC
Topic: Portraits of a Foreign Queen

• Jordan C. Cole, Senior at Davidson College
Hometown: Charlotte, NC
Topic: The Feminine Grotesque: Near and Far

• McKensie Hall, Graduate of the University of South Carolina Upstate
Hometown: Campobello, SC
Topic: Romare Bearden: Seaming Art, History and Narrative

• Amber Rhye, Senior at Winthrop University
Hometown: Charleston, SC
Topic: Angelica Kauffman: Exploring the Female Artist Through History Paintings

Exhibition of students works will be displayed in the STAR Gallery at the Mint Museum Randolph

Seventh grade students at Whitewater Middle School will have their artwork displayed in the Student Artist (STAR) Gallery at the Mint Museum Randolph as part of a grant-funded artists’ residency project that took place this winter. The exhibition of the students’ work will open with a public reception honoring the teaching artists and participating students on Saturday, March 20 from 1:00-3:00 p.m. at the Museum.

“The Mint has enjoyed a successful partnership with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools for more than 30 years,” said School Programs Coordinator Joel Smeltzer. “Each year the talent and creativity exhibited by our local students is nothing short of remarkable. We are grateful to the Arts & Science Council and the Cobb Foundation for supporting innovative teaching programs like this one to help promote appreciation and awareness of visual arts education.”

In January, The Mint Museum partnered with Whitewater Middle School, a new public school in west Charlotte, to implement an integrated art and social studies program in conjunction with the special exhibition Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color (November 14, 2009-February 27, 2010). This exhibition featured paintings that synthesized African, Caribbean, American and African-American iconography and motifs. Working with two native African artists—Braima Moiwai of Durham and Dimeji Onafuwa of Charlotte—nearly 200 seventh grade social studies and visual arts students explored West African cultural beliefs, design motifs and the significance of color and symbolism. They subsequently created paintings and traditional tie-dyed batik cloths incorporating West African symbols. Through this integrated program, the students increased their knowledge and understanding of West African cultural beliefs and values and how they are communicated through the visual arts, and learned to use the elements and principles of design to communicate original cultural ideas.

The exhibition will be displayed in the STAR Gallery at 2730 Randolph Road through April 10, 2010. This project was funded by a Curriculum Connections Grant from the Arts & Science Council, as well as by the Rhoda and Davin Juckett Education Endowment, which is made possible by the Cobb Foundation. The STAR Gallery is supported by Harris Teeter.

March and April programs focus on sustainability practices

The Mint Museum’s Artists’ Forum series will take an environmentally-friendly approach this spring by focusing on green practices and sustainability. Artists’ Forums are an educational series featuring local artists discussing their work, as well as current issues and activities in their artistic fields. The programs are held the first Tuesday of the month from 7:00-8:30 p.m. at the Mint Museum Randolph (2730 Randolph Road). Admission is free.

On March 2, D.I. von Briesen and Richard Deming from gDwell, Inc. and Bryan and Jennifer Shields from the UNC-Charlotte School of Architecture will discuss their EcoBox project, which converts shipping containers into affordable, comfortable housing. gDwell, Inc. is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is the culmination of many years of work building areas, systems and structures with an eye toward creating something different by reusing the materials found readily all around us. The panel will also discuss its Sister Cities Strategy, which links radically sustainable container projects in the Galapagos Islands with a blighted neighborhood in Charlotte.

On April 6, a panel group will discuss general philosophies, innovations and the global view on sustainable design and architecture, followed by a Q&A session. The panelists include Annie Carlano, Director of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design; Anne Jackson, Associate at Perkins and Will Architects; and Carrie Gault, Principal at Happy Box Architecture.

Icelandic artist Hildur Bjarnadǿttir to create a commissioned work for Mint Museum Uptown

The Mint Museum is offering special viewing hours this month to allow the public to observe the artistic process behind a commissioned work that will be installed in the new Mint Museum Uptown this fall. On March 26-27 and March 29-30 (from 2:00 to 6:00 p.m. each day), the public is invited to observe Icelandic fiber artist Hildur Bjarnadǿttir working in the lobby of the former Mint Museum of Craft + Design location (220 North Tryon Street), which will be transformed into a temporary studio during the artist’s visit.

During her visit to Charlotte, Bjarnadǿttir will be creating a fiber art work for Project Ten Ten Ten, a series of commissions created especially for the new Mint Museum Uptown galleries by 10 of the world’s most innovative craft and design artists. Visitors to the craft museum will be able to observe Bjarnadǿttir making natural dye from local plants and ask questions about the artistic process. The dye will be incorporated into the commissioned work, which will be unveiled at the new facility’s grand opening.

“Project Ten Ten Ten will catapult the Mint Museum of Craft + Design to the highest level of artistic excellence by commissioning 10 of the most important craft and design artists from around the world for site-specific work,” said Annie Carlano, Director of Craft + Design. When the doors open on October 1, 2010, visitors will see spectacular works by glass artist/designer Danny Lane (United Kingdom), conceptual jewelry artist Ted Noten (The Netherlands), and furniture maker/designer Joseph Walsh (Ireland), in addition to the fiber work by Hildur Bjarnadǿttir. Equally striking commissions by Kawana Tetsunori, Kate Malone, Tom Joyce, Cristina Córdova, Susan Point and Ayala Serfaty are also being planned for the new facility.

Bjarnadǿttir learned crocheting, knitting and embroidery as a child from her mother, and came of age during the flowering of fiber art in Europe. In her native Iceland she saw museum exhibitions of contemporary textiles and assumed the medium was exalted in the art world. She later learned that this is not the predominant view, and creates work that is a reaction to the commonplace negative comparison of textiles to “fine art.” Whether affixed to a wall or placed upon a pedestal, her needlework creations tell stories of traditional women’s work with a cutting-edge, even macabre, twist.

Exhibition celebrates acclaimed metalsmith’s contributions to the craft community

The provocative humor and pioneering style of metalsmith Gary Lee Noffke will be exhibited in a major retrospective of the artist’s work at the Mint Museum Uptown
this spring. Featuring significant examples of Noffke’s hollowware, flatware, and jewelry, the exhibition Attitude and Alchemy: The Metalwork of Gary Lee Noffke (2 April – 11 September 2011) not only captures the artist’s rebellious nature, but also examines his methodology, evolution of style, and impact on the field of metal.

Described as the “ultimate maverick,” Noffke has dedicated himself to metalsmithing for nearly 50 years, passionately exploring surface, form, and function, while simultaneously embracing and challenging tradition. A self-proclaimed “reprobate” who imbues his work with a dark sense of humor, Noffke has reacted against the medium’s tightly constrained working methods and formal decoration by creating functional objects characterized by wildly manipulated surfaces, subtle changes to utility, and spontaneity. His well-known exploits, such as a tendency to purposely misdate work to trick art historians, serve to communicate the artist’s personality and offer an esthetic statement on the social relevance of contemporary metalsmithing.

Noffke was born in 1943 to working-class parents in Sullivan, Illinois. Because money was scarce during his childhood, Noffke regularly built toys from found materials, and in the process, learned to use tools and work with his hands. His mother encouraged her son’s interest in art, even supplying him with a steady supply of gold to utilize during school. After receiving a Master of Fine Arts in metalwork from Southern Illinois University, Noffke taught at Stetson University and California State College. In 1971, he accepted a position at the University of Georgia at Athens and taught jewelry and metalwork there until 2001. He has received numerous awards and honors for his contributions to metalsmithing, including a National Endowment for Arts fellowship and membership in the American Craft Council’s College of Fellows, and has exhibited his work nationally and internationally.

On view in the changing galleries of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, Attitude and Alchemy spans Noffke’s career from the 1960s to present day and presents approximately 130 examples of his silver and gold jewelry, hollowware, and flatware, along with a selection of objects forged in steel. Accompanying the objects is a video of Noffke laboring in his studio, which will offer visitors a glimpse into his working environment and provide them with a deeper understanding of his process, technique,
and personality.

The exhibition begins with early examples of Noffke’s jewelry and metalwork, which embody his relentless ornamentation and reflect his initial interest in painting and intaglio printing. One of the finest examples of this early work is his 18k Gold Goblet (1970). Often referred to as the holy grail of metalsmithing, the goblet reveals Noffke’s expressive mark-making, as well as a major design influence, ancient Peruvian metalwork. The show then explores objects from the mid-1970s to the
early 1908s, a period during which Noffke closely examined the relationship between form and function to reveal the total working process. Works like Ladle (circa 1975) lack the ornate decoration of Noffke’s early works, demonstrating a shift towards optimum utility.

In the 1990s, Noffke had an artistic breakthrough. Frustrated with cold forging sterling silver, Noffke began making his own alloys and pouring his own billets in the 1990s. Noffke’s research led to the development of his 969 alloy (96.9% silver and 3.1% copper). This new silver alloy allowed him to
increase the scale of his form, and provided greater expediency as well as spontaneity. Noffke went on to research hot forging gold, creating numerous, highly-acclaimed large gold bowls.

The exhibition concludes with Noffke’s elegant forms that integrate surface and form equally. His 21st century works include heavy and expressive hammer marks, adding depth and another layer of information to the surface. This shift led to the use of a range of tools in unorthodox ways to generate textures, lines, and patterns, an approach that continues to impact metalsmithing today. Noffke will give a public lecture about his work on Thursday, 31 March 2011 at 7:00 p.m. at the Mint Museum Uptown. A  scholarly catalogue featuring an essay by independent curator Jeannine Falino will accompany the exhibition. Attitude and Alchemy: The Metalwork of Gary Lee Noffke is
organized by The Mint Museum.

Retrospective exhibition at the Mint Museum of Art surveys seven decades of innovation

The work of Loïs Mailou Jones (1905-1998), a pioneering 20th century African-American artist, will be featured in a retrospective exhibition at the Mint Museum of Art November 14, 2009 – February 27, 2010. Loïs Mailou Jones: A Life in Vibrant Color surveys the artist’s 70-year career, stretching from the late Harlem Renaissance to her contemporary synthesis of African, Caribbean and American iconography.

The exhibition features more than 70 works from the artist’s estate as well as from public and private collections, and includes paintings, sketches and textile designs. Synthesizing a myriad of influences and encounters over her lifetime, Loïs Mailou Jones’s oeuvre remains a significant contribution to American art.

Jones explored a wealth of styles and subject matter in her works. Her skillful observation and inspiration from nature is revealed in colorful landscapes of Martha’s Vineyard, depictions of the winding streets and lush countryside of northern France, as well as traditional still lifes with fruits and flowers. The influence of philosopher Alain Locke, who encouraged Jones and other artists of color to draw inspiration from African arts, is evident in many of her works, such as The Ascent of Ethiopia (1932). She also conveyed the social struggles of African-Americans through powerful psychological portraits such as Mob Victim (1945) and Jennie (1943).

Born in Boston, Jones graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston during a period when racial and gender prejudices pervaded society. She began her career as a textile designer and sold her bold fabric creations to department stores until a decorator told her that a colored girl wasn’t capable of producing such beautiful designs. This incident prompted Jones to shift her artistic focus to the fine arts so that she could sign her name to her works.

Intimations of her transition from design to painting surface in compositions Jones created in the early 1930s during a brief teaching stint at Palmer Memorial Institute, a preparatory school in Sedalia, North Carolina. The paintings Negro Shack 1, Sedalia, North Carolina (1930) and Brother Brown, Greensboro, North Carolina (1931) demonstrate the Regionalist character of her early paintings.

Jones’s sense of design resurfaced later in her career after a series of international travels, which brought out in her works an overt cultivation of pattern and form in a non-narrative format. Her marriage in 1952 to noted Haitian graphic artist Louis Vergniaud Pierre-Noël instigated a change in the subject matter and palette of her paintings. Her frequent trips to Haiti inspired paintings that displayed a marked fascination with the Caribbean culture. After additional travels that included African countries, her work became characterized by brilliant color, rich patterns and a variety of Haitian and African motifs. In 1980 President Jimmy Carter honored Jones for her outstanding achievements in the arts, and she continued to paint until her death in 1998.

MMC+D collections prepare to move to new facility as part of Museum expansion

The Mint Museum of Craft + Design will close to the public on February 7, 2010 to prepare to move its collections to the new Mint Museum Uptown. Opening in October 2010, the Mint Museum Uptown will house the Mint Museum of Craft + Design collections, as well as significant collections of American Art, Contemporary Art and a selection of European Art in a new five-story, 145,000-square-foot facility located in the heart of Charlotte’s business district. The Mint Museum of Craft + Design Shop will remain open for several more months, with a firm closing date to be announced later this spring.

To celebrate the grand opening of the Mint Museum Uptown, the Mint Museum of Craft + Design has launched Project Ten Ten Ten, a series of commissions created especially for the new Mint Uptown galleries by 10 of the world’s most innovative craft and design artists. When the doors open in October, visitors will see spectacular works by glass artist/designer Danny Lane (United Kingdom), conceptual jewelry artist Ted Noten (The Netherlands), furniture maker/designer Joseph Walsh (Ireland) and fiber artist Hildur Bjarnadǿttir (Iceland). Equally striking commissions by Kawana Tetsunori, Kate Malone, Tom Joyce, Cristina Córdova, Susan Point and Ayala Serfaty are also being planned for the new facility.

The Mint Museum expansion includes the construction of a new building in uptown Charlotte and the reinstallation of the historic U.S. Mint facility on Randolph Road. When the expansion is complete, The Mint Museum’s total combined square footage will grow by more than 60 percent, allowing opportunities to showcase more works from the permanent collection and better accommodate significant traveling exhibitions.

The Mint Museum Uptown will be part of the new Wells Fargo Cultural Campus. In addition to the Mint, the completed campus will include the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, the Knight Theater (housing the North Carolina Dance Theatre) and the Duke Energy Center. Following the grand opening of the Mint Museum Uptown, collections at the Mint Museum Randolph will be reinstalled with a fresh new vision. Galleries there will feature the Mint’s superb Ceramics, Art of the Ancient Americas, and Historic Costume and Fashionable Dress collections.

The Mint Museum Uptown is scheduled to open just one year prior to the Mint’s 75th anniversary. Designed by Machado and Silvetti Associates of Boston (design architect), Clark Patterson Lee Design Professionals of Charlotte (architect of record), and George Sexton Associates of Washington, D.C. (museum consultant), the new facility will combine inspiring architecture with groundbreaking exhibitions to provide unparalleled art experiences for its visitors. The Museum expansion will provide larger and more flexible space to showcase the permanent collections and Mint-organized special exhibitions, as well as major touring exhibitions organized by other venues. The new facility will also house a Family Gallery to reinforce the Museum’s dual priorities of art and education.

Exhibition on view at the Mint Museum Randolph February 6- December 31, 2010

Opening February 6 at the Mint Museum Randolph is North Carolina Pottery: Diversity and Traditions, an exhibition that showcases the rich history of pottery-making in the state. Featuring more than 50 works dating from the late 1700s to the present, the installation represents North Carolina’s most important pottery areas, including the Catawba Valley, the mountains, Seagrove and the Moravian settlements.

Moravian potters Gottfried Aust and Rudolf Christ are the earliest potters represented in the exhibition. They emigrated from Germany to the Moravian community of Bethabara in Forsyth County in the mid-1700s. Among the 19th century potters featured are Daniel Seagle from Catawba Valley, and Chester Webster and Himer Jacob Fox from the Piedmont. Craftsmen from the 20th century include Oscar Bachelder, Charlie Teague and Burlon Craig, while contemporary artists and studios include Ben Owen III, Jane Peiser, Bulldog Pottery and Paradox Pottery.

North Carolina is known for its significant local dynasties of potters, and a number of these families are represented in the exhibition, including the Coles of Randolph and Moore counties and the Hiltons of Catawba County. The fact that the pottery tradition in the state has thrived so well for over two centuries is due, at least in part, to talented potting families such as these, who have passed down essential skills and techniques from one generation to the next. All of the objects on view are from the Mint’s permanent collection, which is notable for being the largest public collection of North Carolina pottery in the country.

Funds will support Museum operations, expansion

The Mint Museum has received a gift of $100,000 from Wachovia, A Wells Fargo Company. This operating support gift is part of a $6 million “Spirit of Caring” series of one-time grants to 15 Charlotte-area non-profits announced December 8.

“We are grateful to Wachovia for this generous gift benefiting our organization,” said Executive Director Phil Kline. “These funds will not only help us continue to provide quality art and education experiences to our visitors, but also underscores Wells Fargo’s commitment to the arts.”

“We announced plans to build the Wells Fargo Cultural Campus nearly five years ago to enhance Charlotte’s economic and cultural vibrancy, and we are so proud to see this visionary development come to fruition with wonderful institutions, like The Mint Museum,” said Kendall Alley, Charlotte Regional President for Wachovia, A Wells Fargo Company. “The Mint Museum has been inspiring and educating the Charlotte community with their memorable exhibits and programs for over 70 years, and we are proud to have them as a part of the Wells Fargo Cultural Campus and to support their expansion efforts.”

The Mint Museum expansion includes the construction of a five-story, 145,000-square-foot facility in uptown Charlotte and the reinstallation of the historic U.S. Mint facility on Randolph Road. When the expansion is complete, The Mint Museum’s total combined square footage will grow by more than 60 percent, allowing opportunities to showcase more works from the permanent collection and better accommodate significant traveling exhibitions.

The Mint Museum Uptown will be part of the new Wells Fargo Cultural Campus, located in the heart of Charlotte’s business district. In addition to the Mint, the cultural campus will include the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African-American Arts + Culture, the Knight Theater (housing the North Carolina Dance Theatre) and the Duke Energy Center.

The Mint Museum Uptown is scheduled to open in October 2010, just one year prior to the Mint’s 75th anniversary. Designed by Machado and Silvetti Associates of Boston (design architect), Clark Patterson Lee Design Professionals of Charlotte (architect of record), and George Sexton Associates of Washington, D.C. (museum consultant), the new facility will combine inspiring architecture with groundbreaking exhibitions to provide unparalleled art experiences for its visitors. The Museum expansion will provide larger and more flexible exhibition space and unique galleries to showcase the collections. The new facility will also house a Family Gallery to reinforce the Museum’s dual priorities of art and education.

Exhibition at the Mint Museum of Art centers around American painting with mysterious past

Love a good mystery? A new exhibition at the Mint Museum of Art contains the elements of an art history whodunit—a carefully crafted forgery, a persistent art scholar and a painting thought to be lost for more than 100 years—while taking the viewer behind the scenes of museum life. The exhibition, Identity Theft: How a Cropsey Became a Gifford, is on view November 21, 2009 through March 27, 2010.

Identity Theft centers around one of the Mint’s most important Hudson River School paintings, Indian Summer in the White Mountains by Sanford Robinson Gifford. For more than 50 years and despite questions raised by art scholars, this painting was attributed to Jasper Francis Cropsey and titled Mount Washington from Lake Sebago, Maine, based on Cropsey’s apparently original signature and date in the lower left corner of the painting. Conservation work in 2003 revealed a Gifford signature and a new date beneath Cropsey’s—a find that solved one mystery and uncovered another.

Identity Theft explores the story behind the painting’s authorship and the various processes through which its reattribution was made possible, highlighting typically undisclosed issues, such as connoisseurship, conservation, archival research and the art market. The exhibition will bring together a dozen carefully selected works of art, including three of Cropsey’s known paintings of New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, as well as six of Gifford’s known paintings of the same subject. By displaying paintings of the site by both artists—along with sketchbooks, photographs of the site, and other historical documentation—the Museum will provide its visitors with a thorough look at how it came to reattribute one of the key works in its collection.

The Gifford painting came to the Mint in 1945 when Charlotte resident Elizabeth Boyd placed the recently inherited work on long-term loan. The painting—a pastoral Hudson River School landscape—was signed and dated “Jasper Francis Cropsey, 1871.” At that time, scholarship on American art was still in its infancy, and there was no reason to question the attribution. The painting was subsequently included in the first major retrospective of Cropsey’s work after his death.

In the 1970s, Dr. Ila Weiss, a Gifford scholar, contacted the Mint Museum of Art to voice her suspicions that the Mint’s painting might, in fact, be by Gifford. She argued that not only was the painting’s aesthetic much closer to Gifford’s than to Cropsey’s, but that Gifford had also produced paintings depicting Mount Washington whose compositions were much closer to that of the Mint’s painting than the examples by Cropsey. There even existed an identically-sized canvas of Mount Washington by Gifford that had vanished in the late 19th century.

All signs pointed to the Mint’s painting as being the one that had vanished, but when the area around the signature was examined under blacklight, nothing indicated any overpainting. Thus, despite compelling evidence, the painting remained tenuously attributed to Cropsey.

In 2003 the painting was sent for a routine cleaning and the conservator uncovered a signature just below Cropsey’s—a Gifford signature accompanied by a date. It was decided that the Gifford signature and date should be fully revealed and that the Cropsey signature and date should remain as well, since they did not distract from the painting’s overall aesthetic and had indeed become a fascinating part of its history.

Presented as an historical detective story, this exhibition not only will allow visitors to see how issues such as conservation, provenance and scholarship play out in the museum, but will also give them a sneak peek into the behind the scenes aspects of museum life. By bringing together strong examples of both Cropsey’s and Gifford’s work, this show encourages visitors to carefully study why a painting might be attributed to one artist or another, and ultimately discover how the Mint’s Cropsey “became” a Gifford.

Identity Theft: How a Cropsey Became a Gifford was organized by The Mint Museum. The exhibition is supported in part by the Betty J. and J. Stanley Livingstone Foundation, a grant from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, the Curator’s Circle for American Art and private donors. For a complete schedule of education programs surrounding this exhibition, visit www.mintmuseum.org.

Annual fundraiser by Mint Museum Auxiliary features wide array of home decor items

Get deep discounts on everything from furniture to designer jewelry at the 3rd Annual Mint to Be Yours Tag Saleto be held November 13-14, 2009 at Atherton Mill (2000 South Blvd.). Organized by the Mint Museum Auxiliary, the sale features consigned and gently-used items from some of Charlotte’s most beautiful homes. Proceeds benefit education programs and acquisition efforts at The Mint Museum.

The sale will feature fine home furnishings and décor, antiques, rugs, designer handbags and garden accessories marked 50 percent to 75 percent off original retail prices. This year the Auxiliary has also added artwork by regional artists and galleries and jewelry by local designers, including Turq Jewelry and Laura James. Other participating retailers include Acquisitions, Hotham and Lucy & Company.

The sale hours are 9:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. on Friday, November 13 and 8:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 14. Admission is $5. Items will be marked down an additional 50 percent beginning at noon on Saturday. Mint members and Auxiliary supporters are invited to shop early during a preview event on Thursday, November 12 from 9:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. Unsold items will be donated to Habitat for Humanity.

Established in 1956, the Mint Museum Auxiliary was formed to receive and administer funds for the Museum. The group raises money each year through its annual Mint to Be Yours Tag Sale and Room to Bloom spring celebration.

Danny Lane will discuss glass commission for new Mint Museum Uptown

The Founders’ Circle Ltd., the national support affiliate of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, announces that internationally acclaimed artist and designer Danny Lane will present the annual Founders’ Circle Lecture at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, October 1, 2009 at the Mint Museum of Art. The lecture is free and open to the public, and will be preceded by a cash bar opening at 5:45 p.m. Lane, who has been commissioned to design a large glass wall for the entryway of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design galleries in the new Mint Museum Uptown, will discuss his work in a lecture entitled The Journey Is Your Destination.

Lane (b. 1955) has worked in London since 1975. During the 1980s he was known as one of the “bad boys” of British Design, most celebrated for his edgy glass and metal furniture. Ranging from small-scale works to massive installations, his sculptures explore the strength of glass under compression, and combine feats of engineering and design to create fluid work that is breathtaking in its apparent simplicity and brilliant color.

Lane collaborates frequently with architects on monumental commissions. His works are also found in museums and both private and corporate collections worldwide. He is among the artists involved in Project Ten Ten Ten, a series of commissions for the new Craft + Design galleries from 10 international artists to celebrate the Mint Museum Uptown’s grand opening in the 10th month of 2010. Threshold, his commission for the Craft + Design entryway at the Mint Museum Uptown, will redefine the gallery’s architectural setting, enthralling the viewer through the manipulation of light and space within an undulating curtain of luminous glass. Other projects by Lane include Borealis (2005), one of the world’s largest glass sculptures created for General Motors in Detroit; Parting of the Waves (2001), two kinetic glass walls at Canary Wharf in London; and Balustrade (1994) at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Delhom Service League sponsors annual fundraiser to benefit The Mint Museum

Craft enthusiasts will have the opportunity to meet and purchase works by some of North Carolina’s top potters at the 5th Annual Potters Market Invitational. Widely regarded as one of the most popular pottery sales in the region, the event will take place Saturday, September 12, 2009 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on the lawn of the Mint Museum of Art.

Tickets are $10 for adults ($8 after 2:00 p.m.); $5 for children 5-17; and free for children 4 and younger. Ticket sales begin on the day of the event at 9:30 a.m. The entry fee includes admission to the Mint Museum of Art and free parking. Proceeds support the Museum’s decorative arts collection.

Exemplifying the region’s rich craft heritage, the Potters Market features 40 superb potters representing the state’s most important pottery-producing areas: Seagrove, Piedmont, Catawba Valley and the mountains, including Penland and Asheville. Potters are selected on a rotating basis so that the opportunity to participate can be open to as many artists as possible.

This year’s event features notable returning potters such as Ben Owen III, Donna Craven and Crystal King, as well as a select group of up-and-coming potters, all of whom are creating distinctive work that is gaining national attention. Seven of the selected potters recently participated in the 2009 Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington, D.C., a prestigious juried exhibition of fine craft: Michael Hunt and Naomi Dalglish, Carol Gentithes, Jim and Shirl Parmentier, Akira Satake and Liz Zlot Summerfield. New potters participating this year include the Parmentiers and Summerfield, as well as Steven Forbes de-Soule, Eric Knoche, Will McCanless, Kelly O’Briant, Michael Rutkowsky and Jenny Lou Sherburne.

North Carolina has a central role in American pottery and a growing international reputation in this art field. The Mint Museum of Art has one of the country’s finest collections of pottery and devotes special efforts to documenting the history of North Carolina ceramics. The 5th Annual Potters Market Invitational is presented by the Delhom Service League, an affiliate group of The Mint Museum. For more information, call Barbara Perry, Potters Market Chair, at 704/ 366-0665.

Delhom Service League sponsors annual fundraiser to benefit The Mint Museum

The Delhom Service League, an affiliate group of The Mint Museum, will hold a sealed bid auction of a unique luxury lamp during the two weeks leading up its annual Potters Market Invitational. The auction, which opens August 28 and runs through September 12 at the Mint Museum of Art, will allow buyers to bid on a beautiful addition for their home and also support the Delhom Service League.

Bruce Gholson and Samantha Henneke, owners of Bulldog Pottery in Seagrove, N.C., designed the lamp’s base. The lamp was generously donated by Scott Cornelius Design Studio Ltd. of New York City and the lamp shade was donated by Neal Johnson Ltd. of Charlotte. Bidding on the lamp will end at 3:00 p.m. on September 12, 2009.

The 5th Annual Potters Market Invitational will be held Saturday, September 12 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on the lawn of the Mint Museum of Art. Widely regarded as one of the most popular pottery sales in the region, the event benefits the Mint’s decorative arts collection. Tickets are $10 for adults ($8 after 2:00 p.m.). Ticket sales begin on the day of the event at 9:30 a.m. and include admission to the Mint.

Exemplifying the region’s rich craft heritage, the Potters Market features 40 of North Carolina’s best potters from the state’s most important pottery-producing areas: Seagrove, Piedmont, Catawba Valley and the mountains, including Penland and Asheville. For many potters who do not sell outside of galleries and kiln openings, the Potters Market is a rare event. For more information, visit www.mintmuseum.org or call (704) 337-2000.

Exhibition explores history of one of the world’s premier manufacturers of fine china.

The Mint Museum of Art will present Faces & Flowers: Painting on Lenox China from August 22, 2009 through January 30, 2010. Lenox china is often referred to as America’s greatest porcelain. The exhibition will feature more than 70 objects, including plates, vases and decorative wares with exquisite paintings of orchids, figures, idealized women and landscapes.

Faces & Flowers highlights the remarkable talents of Lenox’s china painters, with works made by the firm’s leading artists for some of America’s foremost citizens, including orchid fancier Charles G. Roebling and Newark industrialist Franklin Murphy, who was governor of New Jersey from 1902 to 1905.

Walter Scott Lenox started the Ceramic Art Company in 1889 in Trenton, New Jersey (becoming Lenox China in 1906), with the ambition to achieve “the perfection of American porcelain.” To achieve his goal, Lenox hired the premier European and American porcelain painters of his time, including Bruno Geyer (Austrian, active late 19th – early 20th century), William Morley (British, circa 1869-1934), and Sturgis Laurence (American, 1870-1961). The quality and creativity shown in the wares from Ceramic Art Company/Lenox China surpassed the best porcelain produced in Europe at the time and enabled Lenox China to make its mark internationally. The company developed such a loyal following that it became the first American china to be used in the White House (during Woodrow Wilson’s administration).

The exhibition is organized and distributed by the University of Richmond Museums, Virginia. It appears at The Mint Museum thanks to the generous support of the Delhom Service League.  An illustrated catalogue with an essay by the exhibition’s curator Ellen Denker, an independent scholar, is available for purchase in The Mint Museum Shops.

Exhibition explores history of one of the world’s premier manufacturers of fine china.

The Mint Museum of Art will present Faces & Flowers: Painting on Lenox China from August 22, 2009 through January 30, 2010. Lenox china is often referred to as America’s greatest porcelain. The exhibition will feature more than 70 objects, including plates, vases and decorative wares with exquisite paintings of orchids, figures, idealized women and landscapes.

Faces & Flowers highlights the remarkable talents of Lenox’s china painters, with works made by the firm’s leading artists for some of America’s foremost citizens, including orchid fancier Charles G. Roebling and Newark industrialist Franklin Murphy, who was governor of New Jersey from 1902 to 1905.

Walter Scott Lenox started the Ceramic Art Company in 1889 in Trenton, New Jersey (becoming Lenox China in 1906), with the ambition to achieve “the perfection of American porcelain.” To achieve his goal, Lenox hired the premier European and American porcelain painters of his time, including Bruno Geyer (Austrian, active late 19th – early 20th century), William Morley (British, circa 1869-1934), and Sturgis Laurence (American, 1870-1961). The quality and creativity shown in the wares from Ceramic Art Company/Lenox China surpassed the best porcelain produced in Europe at the time and enabled Lenox China to make its mark internationally. The company developed such a loyal following that it became the first American china to be used in the White House (during Woodrow Wilson’s administration).

The exhibition is organized and distributed by the University of Richmond Museums, Virginia. It appears at The Mint Museum thanks to the generous support of the Delhom Service League.  An illustrated catalogue with an essay by the exhibition’s curator Ellen Denker, an independent scholar, is available for purchase in The Mint Museum Shops.

The exhibition Face It! explores the popularity of anthropomorphic vessels through time and across a number of American cultures. Face it! on view at the Mint Museum of Art April 4 � August 8, 2009

Co-curated by Consulting Curator of Ancient American Art Dorie Reents-Budet and Curator of Decorative Arts Brian Gallagher, the exhibition features rarely seen works of art from The Mint Museum’s permanent collections of ancient American art and North Carolina pottery, as well as some key loans from local collectors. Face jugs created by notable North Carolina potters such as Burlon Craig, Charlie Lisk and Joe Reinhardt will be featured in the Bridges Gallery, while the Levine Gallery will present beautifully crafted vessels from ancient Mexico, Costa Rica and South America.

The creative urge to give human form to pottery vessels is found all over the world from ancient to modern times.  Some art traditions favor a full rendering of the human form whereas others portray only the barest hint of the body.  Similarly, the purpose and meanings of these “humanized” containers vary according to the culture and audience for whom the artworks were made.
In the ancient Americas, anthropomorphized vessels were common among many cultures.  Some created vases and bowls whose forms and decoration make reference only to the human face, whereas others also allude to the body.  Although appealing to the eye, most vessels are not whimsical creations, but instead convey social, political or religious messages.

In North Carolina, very few face jugs were made until the second quarter of the 20th century, when they slowly attracted the attention of tourists looking for novelty gifts to bring home.  Their height of popularity did not begin until the 1970s, when Catawba Valley potter Burlon Craig re-popularized the form in response to a renewed interest among his customers.  Soon other North Carolina potters began making face jugs as well, so that today they come in all shapes and sizes, and with a wide variety of facial features and expressions.

Exhibition on view July 25, 2009- February 6, 2010

Selections from a rich artistic tradition will be displayed at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design beginning this summer in the exhibition American Quilt Classics, 1800-1980: The Bresler Collection. From rare crib quilts to modern Amish textiles, the quilts on view reflect America’s diverse cultural and artistic heritage.

Between 2000 and 2001, Fleur and Charles Bresler donated to the Mint Museum of Craft + Design 36 American quilts from their collection. Ranging in date from the late 18th century to the mid-20th century, the quilts document the evolution of American quilting traditions, most notably the Baltimore Album Quilt and the Victorian Crazy Quilt. The exhibition explores the historical and cultural context of the quilts, as well as the economic and technological developments that influenced the textiles’ materials and designs.

Quilted bed covering and needlework traditions arrived in America with the first colonists. Each wave of immigrants would add to the development of the American quilt along with new technologies for printing brighter fabrics at lower prices. By the mid-1800s, an American style had emerged that was distinct from British and European influences.

Quilt making surged in popularity during the Great Depression as a source of relief from hard times. Hoping to jump-start the ailing economy, manufacturers created light and cheery fabrics, such as those seen in the exhibition’s Postage Stamp Quilt, which contains thousands of tiny pieces of cloth that were popular in the 1930s.

Despite declining during World War II and the postwar years, quilt making rebounded following the popular and critical reactions to two exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Abstract Design in American Quilts in 1971 and The Quilts of Gee’s Bend (Alabama) in 2003. Quilts gained in appreciation as works of art in their own right, and major public and private collections were formed throughout the country. Contemporary quiltmakers worldwide continue to explore and develop this time-honored tradition, combining colors, shapes and textures in new and exciting ways.

Organized by the Mint Museum of Craft + Design, American Quilt Classics, 1800-1980: The Bresler Collection was originally on view there in 2003. Since then it has traveled around the United States, and is returning to its home for an encore presentation. The exhibition will be accompanied a full-color catalogue available for sale in The Mint Museum Shops.

Exhibition on view at the Mint Museum of Art July 18 – October 17, 2009

The depth and breadth of modern Native American art is featured in Passionate Journey: The Grice Collection of Native American Art.  From Alaska to Guatemala, the exhibition highlights personal expressions in ceramics, basketry, textiles and performance masks. These distinctive works are the outward expressions of personal and religious ideologies, commentaries on social and political conditions, and the material manifestation of cultural survival.

Nelson and Gretchen Grice have been supporting The Mint Museum for many years through donations of Native American artworks. The Grice collection features contemporary Native American pottery primarily from the Southwest; Native American basketry from the Southwest to Alaska; modern Maya textiles from Guatemala and Mexico; and performance masks from West Mexico.

The exhibition is accompanied by a full-color catalogue documenting the artistic traditions presented in the Grice collection.  The book’s chapters discuss each artistic tradition and place the works within the broader cultural context in which the artworks were created.

Symphony’s On Campus programs draw from museum exhibits

The Mint Museum will benefit from a $5.169 million bequest from the estate of longtime Mint member and supporter Nancy Akers Wallace, executive director Phil Kline announced today.

The Mint Museum will benefit from a $5.169 million bequest from the estate of longtime Mint member and supporter Nancy Akers Wallace, executive director Phil Kline announced today.

Exhibition on view at the Mint Museum of Art May 23- November 14, 2009

A new exhibition at the Mint Museum of Art puts the corporate workplace under a magnifying glass, and provides food for thought for as the city of Charlotte finds itself at the epicenter of the banking crisis.
Combining wood’s visual warmth with a startling sense of isolation, nationally acclaimed artist Bob Trotman intensely examines the minutiae of everyday life through his figurative sculptures. In Bob Trotman: Business as Usual, the artist’s human-scaled characters explore issues of power, corporate relations and the psychology of the workplace.
Conceived as an installation with an affinity to Greek tragedy, Trotman’s sculptures of men and women in corporate attire are divided into three subsections: Committee, Cover Up and Chorus. In each of these sections the figures are presented in disconcerting postures – some melting into the floor, others mysteriously covered by a shroud, while those in positions of power reside on pedestals. Their interchangeable expressions fit the persona each must portray to succeed within a competitive environment. Pursed lips prevent disclosure of information or outspokenness, and eyes may be fixed alternately in a glare for subordinates or a fawning gaze reserved for those in positions of greater power.
Trotman uses his sculptures to suggest how the corporate world can lead to a “wooden” existence of keeping up appearances, despite personal problems, and promote inter-personal tensions that bubble beneath the surface. Studying his carved figures, the viewer often gets the sense that things aren’t working out for these characters in the way they had planned. Trotman emphasizes cracks in the figures, mended somewhat crudely with metal patches, to convey the suffering of keeping up their roles or being victimized by those in power. Comically pointed, yet empathetic, his sculptures suggest an enigma at the core of human experience.
Bob Trotman will give a talk about Business as Usual at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday, June 14 at the Mint Museum of Art. This lecture is free for Mint members, or after museum admission. The Bob Trotman: Business as Usual exhibition and publication are generously sponsored by the Goodrich Foundation. A full-color catalogue will accompany the exhibition and include an essay by the Mint’s Curator of Contemporary Art, Carla Hanzal, and an interview with the artist by Dinah Ryan. The catalogue will be available for purchase in The Museum Shop.
VantagePoint is The Mint Museum’s ongoing exhibition series emphasizing the range of exploration and new developments in recent art practice. A resident of Casar, Trotman is the first North Carolina artist to be featured in the series.

Exhibition at the Mint Museum of Art highlights more than 100 years of platform styles

Platform shoes are back this spring, but don’t expect to see them on the runway. Opening April 25 at the Mint Museum of Art, The Heights of Fashion: Platform Shoes Then and Now showcases more than 60 platform shoes from the 1930s through the present – a true shoe lover’s delight!
With origins dating back to ancient Greece, platform shoes first appeared in Europe and the United States during the 1930s and 1940s. The popularity of platforms reached its greatest height in the 1970s, when these shoes became associated with a rebellious youth movement that decried societal standards of older generations. From the free-spirited fashions of the 1970s to the trendy footwear of today, platforms have continued their role as fashion statements worn by both sexes.
The Heights of Fashion spans more than 100 years of platform shoes. Ranging from the delicate “lotus bud shoes” of 19th century China designed to emphasize women’s tiny bound feet to the chunky Goth platforms of the 1980s, the shoes on exhibit demonstrate how extreme variations on a style developed in response to different cultural philosophies and concepts of beauty.
The exhibition includes high fashion platform shoes by couture designers that move—sometimes with caution to the wearer—from the fashion runway to the streets. Footwear by Vivienne Westwood, Jimmy Choo and Roger Vivier reveal influential and innovative designs that incorporate modern engineering with vintage inspiration. Household brands such as Candie’s showcase the platform’s traditional thick sole and chunky heel, while unconventional materials such as titanium, chrome and carbon fiber offer an entirely new look in the sleek, yet feminine, designs of emerging designer Ruthie Davis. The platform’s first wedge heel appears in shoes designed by Salvatore Ferragamo, who is credited with transforming platform shoes from casual beachwear to high fashion in the 1930s.

Interior design magnate and author Charlotte Moss will be the featured luncheon speaker at the Mint Museum Auxiliary’s Room to Bloom Symposium on April 16, 2009 at 10:00 a.m. at the Charlotte Country Club.

Six area undergraduate art history students will present their research papers at the Mint Museum of Arts 19th Annual Regional Collegiate Art History Symposium on Sunday, March 29 at 1:00 p.m

Six area undergraduate art history students will present their research papers at the Mint Museum of Art’s 19th Annual Regional Collegiate Art History Symposium on Sunday, March 29 at 1:00 p.m. From ancient Mesoamerican carvings to contemporary photography, the students’ papers focus on works of art from The Mint Museum’s diverse global collections, or artists represented within the collections.

Since 1990, the Symposium has had the distinction of being one of the country’s few forums that spotlight undergraduate art history research.  After the students present their findings at the program, their research papers will become permanent, bound additions in The Mint Museum’s Library for future research and reference.  Both the program and the reception following are open to the public and free with museum admission.  The Symposium is sponsored by TIAA-CREF.

The 2009 Symposium participants are:

•    Alyssa Ashdown, University of South Carolina Upstate
Hometown: Charlotte, NC
Topic: Beyond Appearances: Julie Moos’ Friends and Enemies Series

•    Katherine Clausen, Davidson College
Hometown: Wallingford, PA
Topic: TBA

•    Kyle Cupit, University of North Carolina at Greensboro
Hometown: Kernersville, NC
Topic: Pastiche and Parody: Imitation’s Role in Julie Heffernan’s Self-Portraiture

•    Marian Cutts, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Hometown: Godwin, NC
Topic: Romare Bearden’s Evening Guitar

•    Kristin Edrington, Queens University
Hometown: Raleigh, NC
Topic: Wiley’s Philip the Fair: David Reinterpreted

•    Tessa Thomas, Winthrop University
Hometown: Pickering, Ontario, Canada
Topic: The Classic Veracruz Style: A Reflection of Traditions

When the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, staff at the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA) took refuge in their museum to protect its artwork from looters and water damage. The fruits of their efforts are reflected in the pristine collections of European and American art which will be on view at the Mint Museum of Art March 14 – June 21, 2009 as the special exhibition Masterworks from the New Orleans Museum of Art.

A new exhibition at ImaginOn: The Joe and Joan Martin Center will not only encourage children to touch the objects on display, but will actively seek their feedback regarding their experiences. Co-developed by The Mint Museum and the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County, the exhibition Art Under Construction will feature working models of interactive art activities for families to test out from March 2 – May 10, 2009 at ImaginOn.

The engaging and spirited work of prominent art jeweler Bruce Metcalf will be on view in the exhibition The Miniature Worlds of Bruce Metcalf at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design February 21 – May 17, 2009.

In this show, small size matters. Cast in silver or carved in wood, Metcalf’s tiny characters act out issues on the stage of miniature worlds. Most of his pieces serve dual purposes as both sculpture and wearable brooches in which the characters “venture” out into the world and engage the unsuspecting viewer with their stories.

As Metcalf has observed, “the miniature can only be entered through an act of imaginative projection. Looking at small objects, viewers will get very close and the object will fill their field of vision. There’s no scale in the imagination, and very small things can become psychologically large.”

The Miniature Worlds of Bruce Metcalf features 76 pieces by the artist, dating from the 1970s to 2001. Taking center stage are Metcalf’s emotional characters, distinguished by their distorted bodies that manifest inflicted pain from human nature’s “dark side.” Big-headed with atrophied limbs, all of Metcalf’s figures are born from cartoon traditions, yet appear strangely credible as they address the artist’s overarching themes of the human condition and issues of dissent.

Also featured is a train layout with trompe l’oeil surfaces created by the artist. This miniaturized world is based on an imaginary winter in a train station near Munich, Germany. In exhibiting this scene, Metcalf seeks to help the viewer understand how miniature worlds may act upon us and how his miniature worlds differ from those in the public imagination.

Born in 1949, Metcalf has long been revered as a leading art jeweler, curator, essayist and critic of contemporary craft. His work has been featured in major exhibitions at venues such as the American Craft Museum in New York and the Renwick Gallery of the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. Most recently, he co-authored Makers: 20th Century American Studio Craft, to be published by the University of North Carolina Press in late spring 2009.

The exhibition is accompanied by a 120-page full-color catalogue available for purchase in The Mint Museum Shops (704/337-2061). For a complete schedule of programs surrounding this exhibition, visit www.mintmuseum.org.

The Miniature Worlds of Bruce Metcalf was curated by Signe Mayfield and organized by Palo Alto Art Center, Division of Arts and Sciences, City of Palo Alto, Palo Alto, California, and has been made possible through the support of the Palo Alto Art Center Foundation; Rotasa Foundation; Windgate Charitable Foundation; the Arts Council Silicon Valley; and private contributions. The exhibition is sponsored by The Founders’ Circle Ltd., the national support affiliate of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design.

Exhibition on view at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design February 14 – June 7, 2009

Powerful ceramic sculptures crafted by acclaimed Israeli artists will be on display at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design February 14 – June 7, 2009. The special exhibition From the Melting Pot into the Fire: Contemporary Ceramics in Israel will feature innovative ceramic works that explore issues of cultural identity and display a wide range of technical and philosophical approaches to this art form. Notably, the Mint Museum of Craft + Design will be the only United States venue for this special offering.

Raising questions about identity within an ancient land, but within the borders of a country created a scant 60 years ago, the exhibition’s artists grapple with issues of immigration, ethnicity, and a sense of place, be it the natural world or the built environment. Ranging from hand-built pieces to wheel-thrown and cast objects, the works feature a diverse array of textures, colors and forms. Surfaces are unglazed or glazed, colorful or subdued, or mixed with other materials or technologies.

From poignant to witty, all of the exhibition’s works have stories to tell. In Sabras in a Tin Can by Zipi Geva, the artist playfully reflects on cultural identity in his work’s title. Sabras are the fruit of the prickly-pear cactus that grow throughout Israel, but an Israeli native is also known in the country’s vernacular as a sabra, which refers to a person who is sweet on the inside, but prickly on the outside.

Artist Yael Novak, co-organizer of the exhibition, said, “Israeli ceramic art today illustrates a diversity and intricacy that derives from a multitude of cultural influences characteristic of immigrant societies.” Indeed, people from all over the globe continue to immigrate to Israel, and the artists among them have created eloquent expressions of life in their adopted country in From the Melting Pot into the Fire.

Just as wine makers speak of terroir, or the taste of place that is evident in great wines, works of art and architecture can reflect particular geography, climate, history and traditions, conveying a distinctive sense of place. As a historical crossroads and a relatively new nation comprised of immigrants, Israel has forged a unique identity. Artists represented in the exhibition explore their personal identities, as well as connections to their homeland through their work in clay. Public educational programs will use the exhibition as a catalyst to explore this unique Israeli sense of place as it is manifested in contemporary art, film, architecture and literature.

23nd annual awards ceremony recognizes Charlotte’s top arts supporters

The Mint Museum and Donald Haack Diamonds & Fine Gems honors the recipients of the 2009 Spirit Awards February 1, one of the Charlotte metro area’s highest honors in the arts.

“The Spirit Award recipients embody the excitement and vitality of Charlotte’s arts supporters,” said Fred Dabney, event coordinator. “Their work for the arts enriches the lives of all Charlotteans and helps us appreciate the diversity of art in our community.”

The 2009 Spirit Award recipients are: Jeanne Brayboy, Dorothy Hodges, Christie Taylor, Jane and Hugh McColl, Pat Riley, Kristine Matthews and Neiman Marcus.

The annual awards ceremony will be held Monday, February 1 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Mint Museum Randolph. Created in 1986, the Spirit Awards honor community members whose contributions of time, talent or resources have significantly enhanced the relevance and vitality of the arts in Charlotte and surrounding areas. A recipient of the 1999 Spirit Award, Donald Haack Diamonds & Fine Gems has been co-sponsoring the Spirit Awards for several years. For more information, contact Fred Dabney at (704) 258-8887.

Two events on Friday, January 23 will celebrate the final weeks of the Mint’s Andy Warhol exhibition and will pay homage to the artists legendary parties.

Enjoy a free walk-through of Andy Warhol Portfolios: Life & Legends from 7:00-10:00 p.m. during a Takeover Friday at the Mint Museum of Art. Hosted by The Mint Museum, Takeover Friday, the Charlotte Lesbian and Gay Fund, and Wesley Mancini, the evening features an exhibition viewing and discussion with the curator, hors d’oeuvres and cash bar, dancing to the hottest tunes spun by DJ Edward Jones, and a special guest appearance by Miss Shelita Hamm. The event is free and open to the public. For more information, visit Take Over Friday.

The Garden & Gun Club is also hosting a Warhol-themed party January 23. From the psychedelic 60s and the glittery disco of Studio 54 to the progressive sounds of today, DJ Andy Kastanas delivers a musical biopic of Warhol’s world. Local nightlife impresario Scott Weaver recreates Warhol’s studio, The Factory, with live models, video and slide projections and live art exhibits. Doors open at 8:00 p.m., tickets are $20/person with a portion of proceeds to benefit The Mint Museum. For more information, visit The G&G Club or call (704) 246-1752.

Come and join in the “Vote for Art” contest sponsored by the Mint Museum Auxiliary. Visit the museum anytime between November 8-30 and cast a vote for your choice of paintings to be added to the American Art Collection.

While visitors to the Mint Museum of Art after November 4 can no longer vote for the next American president, they will be able to cast a deciding ballot for the next American presence in the galleries. The Mint Museum Auxiliary is sponsoring a “Vote for Art,” which will allow visitors to choose between two works of American art currently under consideration for purchase. The voting kicks off on Saturday, November 8 and runs through Sunday, November 30.

“We are delighted to offer this opportunity to residents and visitors to Charlotte,” said Jonathan Stuhlman, Curator of American Art. “I am extremely grateful to the Museum’s Auxiliary for making it possible for the Museum to acquire one of these fabulous pieces, either of which would be a meaningful addition to our collection.”

The works under consideration for acquisition are both still lifes, but strikingly different examples of the genre. Laura Coombs Hills’ Peonies and Velevet is a sumptuous turn-of-the century pastel that exemplifies the artist’s exquisite technical skill and fabulous sense of color. Blanche Lazzell’s Bouquet of Flowers, on the other hand, was painted in 1914 and shows the artist’s synthesis of the latest trends in European modernism. With its high-keyed palette and patchwork of thick brushstrokes, Bouquet of Flowers demonstrates why Lazzell has come to be regarded as one of the most cutting edge and inventive modern artists working in this country in the early 20th century. These two selections represent the diversity of styles among American women artists and underscore the Museum’s efforts to broaden its holdings by female artists. The winning painting will be purchased for the Mint through the Auxiliary’s endowment funds.

Established in 1956, the Mint Museum Auxiliary is an affiliate group of the Mint that supports the Museum’s acquisitions and education programming. The Auxiliary has added hundreds of works to the Mint’s collections since its inception. Most recently, the Auxiliary purchased a striking version of Augusta Savage’s important sculpture Gamin.

Visitors can view Gamin in the Museum’s American art galleries before casting their votes in the ballot boxes by the two paintings under consideration.
For more information, visit www.mintmuseum.org.

What:      “Vote for Art” Contest sponsored by the Mint Museum Auxiliary
Where:    Mint Museum of Art ~ 2730 Randolph Road
When:     November 8-30, 2008 during regular museum hours.
Why:       Voters will select the Mint’s next acquisition of American art.
How:       Ballots can be picked up at the Museum’s reception desk.

The groundbreaking exhibition Scene in America: A Contemporary Look at the Black Male Image explores how artists address race and identity when using images of Black males in their work.

On view at the Mint Museum of Art from April 19 to November 2, 2008, the exhibition features works from the collections of The Mint Museum, the Van Every/Smith Gallery of Davidson College, and private collectors and artists.

“Scene in America undoubtedly marks an important cultural event for Charlotte and the region,” said Dr. Jae Emerling, Assistant Professor of Art at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  “By addressing the ways in which Black males have been represented in contemporary art, the exhibition offers viewers the opportunity to contemplate a series of complex issues ranging from the continued effects of racial stereotypes to the importance of extended families in the African American experience.”

The exhibition investigates shifts in power—from usurpation to attainment—found in contemporary portrayals of black masculinity. The South’s painful past of persecution and stereotyping is a recurring topic explored by the exhibition’s artists. Conversely, images of activism, family and community, and a positive and resilient identity hint at overcoming the societal obstacles left by the legacy of slavery.

Elizabeth Catlett invokes these positive attributes in her loving sculpture Family, while her lithograph To Marry portrays a couple sharing a kiss over the contradictory image of a lynched man, suggesting that the memory of past brutalities is present even in moments of intimacy. Similarly, Benjamin “Old Folks” Davis’ woodwork, Black Men Pledge Unity, shows that activism in great numbers can overcome many barriers.

Other works in the exhibit provide positive alternatives to past stereotypes. Chuck Close’s Lyle, a portrait of contemporary artist Lyle Ashton Harris, is created from many colors and forms, perhaps suggesting the complexity and beauty of Harris’s identity. Tommie Robinson incorporates an image of Charlotte’s Public Library into the background of his portrait titled Product, suggesting that one can achieve a positive self-identity through education, achievement and embracing an African heritage.

Many contemporary artists have found the history and persistence of racial stereotypes to be a compelling source of subject matter for their work. Robert Mapplethorpe’s Untitled #1, portrays model Ken Moody as physically beautiful: an object of desire striking a classical pose. Mapplethorpe acknowledges the stereotype of the black male as a physically powerful being, and seems to celebrate this quality rather than casting him as a figure to be feared.  Photographer Larry Fink’s Black Hand, Checkered Rump depicts a black man with a white female companion at a high society function, and asks viewers to consider his or her own views on mixed-race relationships and the cultural bias that often accompanies them.

Other prominent artists featured in Scene in America include Hale Woodruff, Romare Bearden, Camille Billops, Samella Lewis, John Hairston, Jr., Antoine “RAW” Williams, Juan Logan, Willie Little and John Biggers.

“This is not simply a show about race; rather, it is a promising example of how art instigates discussions, raises questions, and forms communities of viewers,” said Emerling. “With this exhibition, The Mint Museum has taken another important step in promoting not only contemporary art, but cultural diversity as well.”

The exhibition was curated by Kimberly Thomas under the direction of Carla Hanzal, curator of Contemporary Art. Curatorial and library staff have created a blog linked to the Museum’s Web site to encourage dialogue about this exhibition and the important themes it investigates.

The iconic works of Andy Warhol, one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, will be on display at the Mint Museum of Art beginning this October.

The Mint Museum announced today the appointment of Rubie Britt-Height as Director of Community Relations. She will begin work at the Museum on September 30.

Britt-Height brings a strong combination of community outreach, education and public relations experience to The Mint Museum. For the past four years, she has served as Director of Community Affairs at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) in Richmond, where she successfully collaborated with culturally diverse community groups to develop programming related to those groups’ historical and contemporary art contributions. While there, she also hosted speaking engagements to promote VMFA’s message of accessibility to all and oversaw four of the museum’s support groups, along with a new initiative to engage 100 community business and non-profit opinion leaders in experiencing the museum’s amenities.

In her new position at the Mint, Britt-Height will work closely with the Executive Director and board of trustees to cultivate and enhance partnerships and educational opportunities with diverse civic, academic and arts organizations, and existing community partners, and will speak to audiences throughout the region about the Museum’s featured exhibitions, collections and programs.

“This is an exciting time to join The Mint Museum as it prepares to open its new facility in Charlotte’s Center City,” said Britt-Height. “I’m thrilled to be a part of the Museum as it continues to serve the city, state and region as a first-class arts destination. I look forward to collaborating with other arts venues, businesses and civic groups to promote cultural education and understanding through proactive museum outreach and community inclusion.”

Previously, Britt-Height worked in Durham as Executive Director of Sister 2 Hermana, a two-year grant program for African-American and Latin American women to help eradicate breast cancer. She has also served as Head of Communications, Community Relations & Cultural Arts for Greater St. Paul Baptist Church in Durham; Head of Public Affairs for the North Carolina Department of Transportation in Raleigh; and Information and Communications Specialist for the City of Charlotte. Britt-Height also established the “Black Art Expo” and African-American contemporary art collection at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church in Charlotte, which showcases works donated by local artists during the annual expos.

“We are extremely pleased that Rubie will be joining the Mint,” said Cheryl Palmer, Director of Education. “She has a great wealth of experience in developing accessible programs and building appreciation for the arts across generations. Her passion for serving the community, combined with her creative leadership, makes her the right person to expand our outreach initiatives and build and enhance relationships with Charlotte’s leaders and its citizens.”

Britt-Height received a bachelor’s degree with honors in mass media arts from Hampton University and has begun advanced coursework in the master’s program for technology and communications at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also a 2006 graduate of Leadership Metro Richmond, a member of the Public Relations Society of America and Americans for the Arts, and has served on the boards of the YWCA and YMCA for the Richmond region. Britt-Height has two daughters, Brittanie, 20, and Chauncie, 10.

Join us on Sunday, September 7 to kick off the countdown to the new Mint Museum in Center City! The community is invited to help celebrate as we raise excitement about our new location, raise awareness of what the new facilities will offer, and ultimately, start to raise a new Museum!

Ornament as Art: Avant-Garde Jewelry from the Helen Williams Drutt Collectionplaces contemporary jewelry within a larger framework of 20th and 21st century art. Opening at the Mint Museum of Craft + Design this fall, the exhibition showcases a broad array of national and international works from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s celebrated Helen Williams Drutt Collection of contemporary jewelry.

The exhibition Jaguar: Power in the Ancient Americasfeatures the remarkable diversity of jaguar representations in earthenware, stone, wood and the fiber arts throughout the ancient Americas and among modern indigenous peoples. From intricate masks to delicate ceramics, visitors will experience the extraordinary artistic variations unique to each culture and explore the layers of meaning behind these representations.

The Mint Museum of Art has originated a traveling exhibition of more than 100 rare and unique works by British-born artist and writer Clare Leighton.

This collection of Leighton’s work, assembled and donated to the Museum by Charlotte resident Gabby Pratt, is one of the largest in the country and includes more than 180 of the artist’s finely-detailed engravings, drawings and watercolors, spanning Leighton’s career from 1923 to 1965.

Quiet Spirit, Skillful Hand: The Graphic Work of Clare Leighton provides a full survey of Leighton’s career, from her earliest prints in the 1920s that depict the labors of the English working classes to a selection of her rarely seen watercolors. Unique to the Pratt collection is a set of 12 Wedgwood plates, titled “New England Industries,” for which Leighton designed the transfer-printed images. Among the exhibition’s highlights are the prints that resulted from Leighton’s early visits to North America, including The Breadline, New York and Snow Shovelers, New York, as well as the artist’s entire Canadian Lumber Camp series.

Born to an artistic family, Leighton studied wood engraving in Great Britain before moving to the U.S. during World War II. Settling first in Baltimore, she moved to Chapel Hill in 1943 and served as a visiting art lecturer at Duke University from 1943 to 1945. During her career, Leighton wrote 15 books and created more than 700 intricate prints. The Pratt collection includes numerous examples of her critically-acclaimed scenes of agrarian life in both England and the American South.

During her lengthy career, Leighton illustrated her own writing as well as classic and contemporary literature, including notable commissions for books written by Thomas Hardy, Emily Brontë and Thornton Wilder. Quiet Spirit, Skillful Hand will feature numerous wood engravings that Leighton created specifically as book illustrations, including those for her own book, Southern Harvest, and those commissioned for the seven-volume set of The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore.

To accompany the exhibition of Leighton’s work, the Museum presents Coming Home: Selections from the Schoen Collection. This outstanding exhibition features 22 paintings from the collection of Jason Schoen of Miami. Schoen’s holdings of American Scene painting trace the social, economic and political changes that occurred across this country between World Wars I and II — roughly the same era in which Leighton created her compelling engravings.

The paintings from the Schoen Collection, by artists such as Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry, Joe Jones, Robert Gwathmey, Kenneth Hayes Miller and Ben Shahn, provide a broad national context for the themes and subjects found in Leighton’s work. This exhibition is not only a rare opportunity for visitors to see numerous works from one of the top collections of American Scene paintings held in private hands, but also to reflect upon our country’s history as seen through the eyes of some of its most important artists.

Quiet Spirit, Skillful Hand: The Graphic Work of Clare Leighton and Coming Home: Selections from the Schoen Collection are on view at the Mint Museum of Art from May 17 through September 14, 2008. The Leighton exhibition will then travel to the Cameron Art Museum in Wilmington, N.C.

Both exhibitions include beautifully illustrated catalogues available for purchase in the Mint Museum Shops. The Clare Leighton catalogue is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art, as well as a grant from the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation.

The Mint Museum announced today a $5 million grant award from the Robert Haywood Morrison Foundation. This gift will support enhancements to the Mint’s new facility, which will open in 2010 in the heart of Charlotte’s burgeoning Center City. In recognition of this generous gift, The Mint Museum in Center City will name its dramatic, light-filled Atrium – the Museum’s principal gathering area – in honor of the late Mr. Morrison.

“We are grateful to the Robert Haywood Morrison Foundation for what is a transformative gift for our Museum,” said Phil Kline, Executive Director. “The Mint has ambitious plans to serve our public in the 21st century, and these funds will enable us to provide magnificent art experiences for all who enter the Museum. We are fortunate to have partners like the Morrison Foundation who recognize the significance of offering unique educational and cultural opportunities for all of our visitors.”
The funds from the Foundation will be used to build and enhance visitor amenities to ensure the Museum’s goal of creating an innovative, state-of-the-art facility.
“The generous gift by the Robert Haywood Morrison Foundation represents an unprecedented opportunity for The Mint Museum,” said Zach Smith, chairman of the Museum’s Building Committee. “The Board of Trustees saw the significance of the visitor experience as an essential component of the Museum’s expansion. We are deeply grateful to the Foundation for its commitment to this vision. This gift gives us the ability to enhance the visitor experience in the Mint’s new facility.”

Dr. Cynthia Haldenby Tyson, President of the Robert Haywood Morrison Foundation, said, “This gift demonstrates confidence in The Mint Museum’s expansion initiative and the City of Charlotte. Mr. Morrison avidly supported Charlotte’s drive towards growth. He would have applauded the evolution of Center City and would have enjoyed seeing the vibrancy of its current redevelopment.”

The Robert Haywood Morrison Foundation is a private foundation committed to strengthening higher education, promoting the arts and preserving the environment for current and future residents of the states of North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. Established in 2001, the Foundation honors the life and legacy of the late Robert Haywood Morrison.

Born in Hickory, N.C., in 1927, Robert Haywood Morrison was a gifted scholar, educator and businessman. A longtime member of The Mint Museum, Mr. Morrison held a deep appreciation for traditional fine arts. He enjoyed creativity in all forms, although the creative entrepreneurial spirit that he brought to real estate endeavors gave him the greatest personal fulfillment. Mr. Morrison’s gifting philosophies reflected his strong conviction that capital and endowment gifts provide lasting value to an organization and are likely to endure over time. He passed away in 2005.

The Mint Museum in Center City is scheduled to open in the fall of 2010, just one year prior to The Mint Museum’s 75th anniversary. Designed by Machado and Silvetti Associates of Boston (design architect), Clark Patterson Lee Design Professionals of Charlotte (architect of record), and George Sexton Associates of Washington, D.C. (museum consultant), the new facility will combine inspiring architecture with groundbreaking exhibitions to provide unparalleled art experiences for its visitors. The Museum expansion will provide larger and more flexible exhibition space and unique galleries to showcase the collections. The new facility will also house a Family Gallery to reinforce the Museum’s dual priorities of art and education.

Showcasing the work of six young North Carolina studio craft artists, Possibilities: Rising Stars of Contemporary Craft in North Carolinaillustrates the vitality and diversity present among a new generation of artists.

mpressive works of wearable art will be on display in the special exhibition The Art of Affluence: Haute Couture and Luxury Fashions 1947-2007.

Annual awards ceremony marks its 22nd year recognizing Charlotte’s top arts supporters.

The Mint Museum and Donald Haack Diamonds & Fine Gems honored the recipients of the 2008 Spirit Awards on January 26. The Spirit Awards are one of the Charlotte metro area’s highest honors in the arts.

“The 2008 Spirit Award recipients embody the excitement and vitality of Charlotte’s arts supporters,” said Fred Dabney, event coordinator. “Their work for the arts enriches the lives of all Charlotteans and helps us appreciate the diversity of art in our community.”

The 2008 Spirit Award recipients are: Jennifer O. Appleby, Fred Lowrance, Marilyn B. Mack, Sandra A. Pettyjohn, Richard J. Osborne and Frank Bragg Financial Advisors.

Created in 1986, the Spirit Awards honor community members whose contributions of time, talent or resources have significantly enhanced the relevance and vitality of the arts in Charlotte and surrounding areas. A recipient of the 1999 Spirit Award, Donald Haack Diamonds & Fine Gems has been co-sponsoring the Spirit Awards for several years. For more information, e-mail or call Fred Dabney at 704/258-8887.

Proceeds to benefit Outward Bound Intercept program

The Mark Headen Endowment Fund and Wells Fargo Private Bank are pleased to announce the second fundraising event Modeling for Impact on January 20^th, 2018 at Mint Museum Uptown in Charlotte, N.C. With gratitude and pride, the event will be a part of The Mint’s Year of Fashion celebration. All proceeds will be contributed to North Carolina Outward Bound’s Intercept program. Acclaimed news anchor Maureen O’Boyle will emcee the event.

The Mark Headen Endowment would like to give special thanks to Wells Fargo Private Bank for being Modeling for Impact’s title sponsor for the second year in a row. Uwharrie Bank, Springs Creative, and Alphahound are also corporate sponsors for the 2018 fundraising event. Hendrick BMW will be providing transportation throughout the weekend for all the traveling models. Homewood Suites by Hilton – Southpark will be accommodating the models during their stay. Tony Hernandez Studios, represented locally by Hidell Brooksgallery, Windy O’Connor, and Capitol are among those who have donated items to be bid upon during the silent auction portion of the event.

Modeling for Impact will feature a runway show produced, casted, and styled by Headenistic – a Charlotte-based full-service production and talent agency owned by the late Mark Headen’s eldest son, Franklin Headen. Franklin has worked for the last six years as a photo producer, casting director, wardrobe stylist, model scout, and talent manager for fashion brands throughout the US and the UK. He started his journey in fashion as a Historic Costume Collection Intern at The Mint Museum back in 2010.  He was also heavily involved in writing the copy for the 2011 Oscar de la Renta Art of Fashion event and the production of the accompanying fashion show presentation at the Mint. Headenistic’s Sabrina Linville, director and producer of Model Material will be co-producing the runway show. Supermodel Anna Wolf will be headlining the runway show. Wolf is from Charlotte, N.C. and has walked for designers including Oscar de la Renta, Ralph Lauren, and Lela Rose. She is also one of the muses of Victoria’s Secret photographer David Bellemere’s. She met Franklin Headen during the casting for the Oscar de la Renta show at the Mint in 2011 and they’ve collaborated on countless projects since then.

Los Angeles fashion brands Indah, Hot as Hell, and Beach Riot, as well as New York lines _SCAPES NY and 6 Shore Road will be sending their new collections to be debuted on the Modeling for Impact runway. Amerie 1936—a Charlotte-based accessories brand by sisters Jasmine and Shanetta Foster—will be adorning the runway looks with their jewelry. Franklin Headen and Jasmine Foster met and graduated together at Charlotte’s Northwest School of the Arts.

Award-winning New York City-based makeup artist and hair stylist Katy Albright will be creating the beauty looks for the runway show. Albright, a Charlotte native, will be leading the beauty team comprised of Stewart Hough, Jami Svay, Elizabeth Tolley, and the Jeffre Scott team comprising Charlton Alicea, Mary Ingram, and Alane Paraison.

New York City-based fashion and portrait photographers Nikki Krecicki and Grace Ann Leadbeater will be documenting the event through still images. Krecicki and Leadbeater have had work exhibited both in New York and the South. Krecicki has also been a Photo Researcher and Photographer for Conde Nast and Vogue.com since early 2017, while Leadbeater has collaborated with major art and fashion icons Lady Gaga, Nan Goldin, and Giambattista Valli. Video Content Creator Jordan Studdard, who is also based in New York City, and Argentinian-born filmmaker and photographer Annie Piacentini, will also be documenting the event through moving image. Additionally, Paris Mumpower, a New York City-based graphic designer/digital media artist and photographer, will document the event, as well. Franklin Headen developed friendships with these five artists while studying at the Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, GA.

Popular tours by Docents of The Mint Museum bring Mint’s collection to bibliophiles

Docents of The Mint Museum are launching a third Art of Reading tour, now incorporating The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver brings to life the Mexico of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera as well as the America of Pearl Harbor, FDR, and J. Edgar Hoover. Set partially in 1940s Asheville, it is a powerful tale of the forces that shape national as well as personal identities.

Tours will highlight objects in the collection at Mint Museum Randolph illustrating the multiple cultures and historic periods Kingsolver deftly weaves together.

Previously launched tours are also available featuring Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice and The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd. They are available for private reservation for book clubs or other groups, and occasional public tours are listed at mintmuseum.org/happenings. See mintmuseum.org/visit/group-tours/ for more information.

Members of the media and special guests are invited to experience the latest Art of Reading tour at Mint Museum Randolph on March 8 from 10-11 a.m. RSVP to aross72@carolina.rr.com to attend.

Attendees of the March 8 preview will also have the opportunity to receive new details about the highly anticipated upcoming exhibition The Glamour and Romance of Oscar de la Renta , set to open at Mint Museum Randolph in late April and remain on view through July 29.