The Department of Fine Arts sponsors the Art Gallery Series.
Art galleries are located in both the Hyman Fine Arts Center and the Smith University Center. The University Center Gallery is in the main commons area and is optimized for secure display of large two-dimensional works. The Fine Arts Center Gallery features large cases along glass walls, allowing three-dimensional works to be displayed and viewed from the outdoor breezeway as well as inside the lobby adjacent to the Fine Arts Theatre and Adele Kassab Recital Hall. A lighting grid and configurable display partitions provide a flexible gallery space for two- and three-dimensional works throughout the remainder of the lobby. |
Portion of Student Show in University Center Gallery Cases |
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Senior shows are required of all students majoring in Visual Arts. At the end of each semester, the galleries also feature works produced by students enrolled in studio art classes. These shows give students hands-on experience in selection and installation of artworks, publicity of exhibition, and external review by the University community and general public. |
The Galleries Curator
then selects among distinguished
regional artists to fill out the Art Gallery Series schedule in order
to have two- and three-dimensional shows changing monthly throughout
the academic year. Whenever possible, gallery
openings are designed to coincide with First Tuesday Arts Event
concerts, a series of light and varied chamber music recitals held in
the Kassab Recital Hall adjacent to the Fine Arts Center Gallery.
Below find information about some of this season's exhibitions. Please check the Arts Calendar for more information about First Tuesday concerts as well as the Art Gallery Series schedule. |
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Art Gallery Series
August 31 - October 15, 1999 |
African art is often
recognized for being both visually striking and spiritually potent.
While carved wooden masks and figures are the types of art objects we
usually associate with Africa, less known are the works which challenge
these Western-imposed notions of what African art can or should be.
Such is the case with the painted koranic boards of Malam Zabeyrou, an
artist whose work was first exhibited publicly last year at Winthrop
University Galleries in Rock Hill, S.C., and has also been featured in
Revue Noire, a journal dedicated to contemporary art of
Africa. A Muslim clergyman and scholar born in the 1940s in Niger, West
Africa,
Zabeyrou has become internationally recognized for his work - objects
which
transcend their more traditional religious function to express deeply
held
beliefs and lived experience.
While koranic boards are
generally used throughout the Muslim world as a kind of writing tablet,
on which individuals read and write Arabic verses in ink from the Koran
(the holy book of Islam), Zabeyrou chose instead to use brightly
colored enamel paint to write both religious and secular phrases in a
unique compositional layout in order
to draw attention to the messages of his boards. Like the Bible, verses
from the Koran are seen by Muslims as the Word of God (or Allah).
Indeed,
for Muslims the Word is God, and these boards (and the act of writing
on
them) are seen as sacred works. Thus by using the koranic board format,
and
referencing the religious authority of Islam via holy verses in Arabic,
Zabeyrou
was deliberately tapping into the spiritual vitality of this rich and
historic
tradition.
This strategy draws attention
to the subject of his boards, a combination of Arabic, English, and
French
words which make reference to his unjust imprisonment for selling
Muslim
literature in 1985. Because this event occurred on the eve of the
arrival
of George Bush (then Vice President on official visit to Niger), Bush's
name,
along with other key words and phrases which evoke this event,
frequently
make an appearance on these boards. Zabeyrou thus used these words,
within
an already established religious framework, to create an ongoing
discourse
- a discourse which he hoped would communicate the truth behind this
injustice, and thereby elevate God's name. In the end, these works
ultimately testify to the power inherent in such objects, and to the
ways in which an artist can transform common items into works of art
which are truly dynamic, both visually and conceptually.
The boards in this exhibition
were collected over a ten-year period by Dr. Alice Burmeister,
Assistant
Professor in the Department of Art and Design at Winthrop University,
who
first met Zabeyrou in 1989 while serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer in
the
Maradi region of Niger. Four return trips by Burmeister during her
subsequent
doctoral research in the art of that region resulted in a lasting
friendship
with the artist who consistently and graciously shared his life history
and
the ongoing process of his work with her. The photographs accompanying
the
exhibition were taken during Burmeister's field research in 1996 and
'98,
and reveal both the artist at work, as well as the environment that he
created
for himself: a cluster of cement buildings located at the intersection
of
four major streets, which he painted with the same styled messages as
those
found on his boards. Zabeyrou's unexpected death in December of 1998,
virtually
on the eve of his first public exhibition at Winthrop University, lends
poignancy
to the life of a talented man who never ceased to communicate both the
beauty
of Islam and his personal imperative for social justice throughout the
most
artful of means.
Art
Gallery Series February 29-March 31, 2000 Hyman Fine Arts Center Gallery Messages: Sculpture by Jean Grosser
"As an artist, I am
interested in using visual expression to explore issues of social and
political conflict. These interests stem from a family tradition of
political activism. My grandfather was a conscientious objector during
World War I. His experiences in military prisons (Alcatraz and
Leavenworth) between 1918 and 1921 have been the subject of my artwork
in the past. Jean Grosser is Professor of Art and Chair of the Art Department at Coker College in Hartsville, South Carolina. |
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Background image © Walter Sallenger.