Whose Fly Is This? (1988), a plastic fly and paper in a Plexiglas magnifying box by Ilya Kabakov, is part of the traveling exhibition "At the Threshold of the Visible: Minuscule and Small-Scale Art, 1964-1996." The Johnson Museum of Art will host the exhibition Aug. 30 through Oct. 26.
Early American photography and minuscule works of art are the focus of two new exhibitions opening Aug. 30 at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art on campus.
American Photographs from the National Museum of American Art: The First Century, on display Aug. 30Nov. 2, is a representation of the broad and diverse uses and goals of early American photography.
Culled from the Isaacs Collection in the National Museum of American Art, the 160 works explore the importance of the photographic medium in American visual culture. As the technology of photography spread and evolved, its role in society was subject to constant speculation, debate and revision. The exhibition includes everything from daguerreotypes and tintypes to silver prints and platinum prints, and it has its share of images from familiar photographers, such as Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Eadweard Muybridge, Timothy O'Sullivan and Clarence H. White.
The exhibition, organized for the Johnson Museum by Nancy Green, curator of prints, drawings and photographs, is being circulated by the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution and is made possible by the Consolidated Natural Gas Co. Foundation in partnership with the National Museum of American Art.
In conjunction with the exhibition, New York Times critic Vicki Goldberg will deliver the Georges Lurcy Lecture on "Photography Storms the Gates of Art," Oct. 4 at 1 p.m. in Hollis E. Cornell Auditorium of Goldwin Smith Hall.
At the Threshold of the Visible: Minuscule and Small-Scale Art, 1964-1996 will be on exhibit Aug. 30Oct. 26. The exhibition highlights art works that are so slight generally less than three inches in diameter that they embody some of the specific qualities and issues associated with the extremely small, in particular, intimacy. The exhibition includes works by Joel Shapiro, Gene Davis, Ilya Kabakov and Yoko Ono. Though the art in this exhibition spans a wide aesthetic range, its use of minuscule size brings into focus shared formal and psychological concerns and explores the way size transforms the meaning of an object or image.
At the Threshold is a traveling exhibition organized and circulated by Independent Curators Inc. (ICI) from New York. The exhibition, tour and catalog are made possible, in part, by grants from the Foundation To Life Inc. The exhibition is accompanied by an illustrated 96-page catalog published by ICI and organized for the Johnson Museum by Sean Ulmer, curator of painting and sculpture.
The Johnson Museum is free and open to the public, Tuesday through Sunday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.