Forming American Identities: Our Southern Legacy Virginia Art Museum
Courtesy of Andrea Douglas, Curator, Collections and Exhibitions
In keeping with the Museum’s curatorial mission of investigating those things that make us particularly American, we are embarking on a series of programs meant to impact the University and the community, using as catalysts three exhibitions, William Christenberry: Site/Possession (October 19-December 23, 2007), The Dresser Trunk Project (November 2 – December 23), and the Legacy of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art (January 18 – April 10, 2008). The subject matter inherent in these exhibitions -- race and power, history and culture, land use, economics, aesthetics, memory, and more – offers a stimulating platform for explorations into our understanding of the American South and American identity. This project furthers the Museum’s colloquia created for the Whiteness, A Wayward Construction exhibition of a few years ago, which brought students faculty and community members together to discuss issues of race and privilege. William Christenberry: Site/Possesion William Christenberry is one of the most esteemed American artists alive today. The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC, opened its building (following years of renovation) with a major show of his work (on view for the year) and a folk art exhibition drawn from its collection, curated by the artist. An Aperture exhibition of Christenberry’s photographs is currently touring the U.S. Christenberry has served as a faculty member, teaching painting and drawing, at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, D.C., since 1968. The Corcoran is currently in a campaign to endow his position. About five years ago Christenberry gave a slide lecture at UVA. At that time Richard Guy Wilson asked if he would consider having a major exhibition here, and he warmed to the idea. Because his work includes both images and constructions of buildings it is of interest to the Architecture School. Wilson is also a photography collector, well aware of Christenberry’s importance in that field, too. Finally, he was particularly eager to hav the Museum show Christenberry’s “Tableau,” or Klan room. We brought Christenberry to the University last fall to meet with Wilson and other faculty (as well as Sam Abell, a friend and admirer), and outlined the nature of the exhibition. Following that meeting, Andrea and I have been traveling to Washington, meeting regularly with Christenberry in his studio, selecting work and further organizing the exhibition, which, we anticipate, will travel to 3-6 museums. This exhibition is the first of its kind for the artist as it focuses primarily on his, as yet, rarely exhibited drawings, dating from 1959 to the present. Christenberry draws nearly every day, and it is apparent that all of his other work is generated from the drawings through which he captures the vitality and transient nature of memory. By situating the paintings, constructions, photographs, and structures in the exhibition as extensions of drawings, the project becomes an important reevaluation of Christenberry’s artistic intent.
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This is also true of one aspect of the exhibition -- what the artist calls “the Tableau,” a critical examination of the Ku Klux Klan, consisting of 200+ drawings, dolls, and objects. Christenberry’s imagery focuses on Hale County, Alabama, and the site’s relationship to the Klan is historically and personally significant to him. By the second rising of the Klan in the 1920s, the state of Alabama was considered to be “the most completely Klan-controlled state in the Union.” The organization’s influence there continued well into the 1970s and certainly was pervasive when Christenberry, out of curiosity, attempted to enter a Klan meeting in Tuscaloosa in the 1960s. The combined feelings of terror and bewilderment that resulted from his initial interaction have fueled a fertile amount of artistic production concerning this subject. While the 200 or so dolls that comprised the original tableau, stolen from the artist’s home in 1979, suggest an intensive consideration of the Klan, the abundance of the subsequent tableau (begun in 1990) reveals more thoroughly the way in which Christenberry grapples with the dichotomy between public and private knowledge of a singular place and event. In the tableau he viscerally forces the viewer to deal with humanity’s moments of “evil and violence.” The timeliness of this aspect of the exhibition is borne out by a recent editorial in the New York Times called “ They Are America. The piece mentioned the Anti-Defamation League’s growing concern about increased Ku Klux Klan activity around the country focused on “hatred of new immigrants.” In fall of 2006, we presented this exhibition, and the Legacy of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art to a group consisting of faculty with teaching interest in the South and members of the Monticello staff. After an hour-long discussion, several faculty members expressed interest in utilizing both exhibitions in their teaching. Hence, many of the issues engendered by them will be a part of next year's curriculum. Christenberry will be installing the Tableau in the week prior to the exhibition's opening. At that time he will address students from the University and the community who in turn will act as docents for the exhibition. For the Museum's Blizzard Lecture, he will present a public talk about his work. We are also planning a series of colloquia that will address issues of visual culture, music, economics, land use and race. We have tentatively set the date of October 23rd for the first event. Given the sensitive The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with selected images and an essay by the Museum's curator Andrea Douglas. The show will travel to other venues including American University, Washington and Lee University and Bucknell University. We are aware that the sensitivite content of the show calls of extensive community outreach and planning on our part and educational guides that can precede the show here and as it travels to other museums. We will be meeting with community members throughout the Spring, Summer and Fall. We have applied for a VA Commission on the Arts grant to propose an innovative educational collaboration between the University of Virginia Art Museum, Monticello, and both the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County Schools in the development and implementation of a curriculum program that supports history and art Standards of Learning in the 11th grade as well as diversity training. All 11th graders in the county and many in the city’s public schools will have three field trips (two to the museum, in the spring and fall, and one to Monticello) and a coordinated set of projects developed, presented, and evaluated jointly by Museum and Monticello staff, artists, and public school teachers. The aim of the project is threefold: 1) to
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strengthen 11th grade history (“U.S. History” in the city curriculum, and “American Studies: The American Narrative” in the county curriculum); 2) to strengthen 11th grade art (I was a reviewer of the Commonwealth’s SOLs in the arts); and 3) to increase awareness of diversity issues and respect for difference. The latter is a particularly relevant goal in light of increasing gang activity in the community and a more visible presence of the KKK.
The Dresser Trunk Project November 2 – December 23 Organized by William Daryl Williams, Associate Professor, School of Architecture, this traveling exhibition features ten display trunks designed by ten architects from around the country, each of which tells a story of a place of refuge in an era of segregation. These sites, all of which are located in a city served by the Southern Crescent Line, range from a hotel to a train station to a Negro League baseball park. The trunks contain stories, photographs, maps, hotel registers, and computer-generated models of the way places looked or might have looked during the segregation era. The exhibition will be shown at ten other locations along the Crescent Line (currently the Amtrak service connecting New Orleans and New York). Williams will give a public talk and participate in the colloquia. Legacy of Slavery: The Plantation in American Art January 18 – April 10, 2008 Organized by the Gibbes Museum in Charleston, this exhibition and its accompanying publication examine the aesthetic motives and social uses of artworks that deal with the theme of the plantation. The show offers a broad chronological sweep, beginning with a 1770 painting by Joseph Purcell and culminating in the late 20th century with work by such artists as Carrie Mae Weems and Joyce Scott. Comprising about 80 objects, including paintings, works on paper, photographs, collages, mixed media and installation pieces, the exhibition includes several African American artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Programmed as part of a year of exploration into the forging of American identities in relation to Southern culture and history, the exhibition addresses how the image of the plantation functions within the history of American art and Southern history and the impact of these images, both real and perceived, on race relations. Associate professor Maurie McInnis was instrumental in the organization of this exhibition and has written one of the catalogue essays. She is planning a symposium in the spring related to the show.
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