21c – Bay Art Files

The Nellie Mae Rowe story via Cincinnati

The Nellie Mae Rowe story via Cincinnati
By Katherine Gibson

Ever since I saw the meticulous model of Nellie Mae Rowe’s Playhouse, which was created for the 2023 documentary about her life, titled This World Is Not My Own: The Limitless Story of Nellie Mae Rowe (TWINMO), I have wanted to see the film.

The Playhouse model as seen in the exhibition *Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe*.
High Museum of Art, Atlanta (September 3, 2021 – January 9, 2022) Photo: K. Gibson

I wrote about the model in a previous 2021 Bay Art Files article when I reviewed Really Free: The Radical Art of Nellie Mae Rowe exhibition at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. The film is now out and a screening was scheduled in late August at the Cincinnati Art Museum. There happened to be a 21c Museum Hotel not far, so my decision was made. I would see the film, stay at the 21c, take in Cincinnati and write about all of it! I snapped out of my summer slump, rejuvenated to have plans and an assignment. (In case you didn’t know, I am the official roving correspondent for Bay Art Files – Atlanta, Miami, Nashville, and now Cincinnati.)

The screening of This World Is Not My Own was part of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s programming during Creating Connections, Self-taught artists in the Rosenthal Collection, which included a Nellie Mae Rowe crayon-on-paper drawing, titled Pink Pig. The accompanying wall text read: “Her whimsical compositions feature animals and other motifs drawn in saturated, jewel-like colors. Here, the calm simplicity of the pig enclosed in a heart is in contrast to the rest of the drawing crowded with animals, a human figure, and a large flowering tree.” I think of Rowe’s actual Playhouse as like the image in Pink Pig, a centered, creative calm in the midst of encircling influences. (To understand the context of The Playhouse, see the previous Bay Art Files article The Important Work of Nellie Mae Rowe.)

The World Is Not My Own was screened at several film festivals in the Spring and recognized for Best Cinematography at the 2023 Atlanta Film Festival and the film has received 100% on Rotten Tomato’s tomatometer (an amalgamation of film and television critics recommendations). Festival programming promoted TWINMO as “a documentary film that traces the lifespan of artist Nellie Mae Rowe through motion capture technology to replicate human expressions and movement, performed by actor Uzo Aduba.”

As a result, there are some well-written reviews, excerpts of which I will share.

Sheri Linden, of The Hollywood Reporter: “…Rowe took her independence seriously, as the captivating film portrait This World Is Not My Own makes vibrantly clear. After years of farm work and many more years as a domestic servant, the twice-widowed Georgian decided, in the powerful words of one of her great-great-nieces, ‘to design my life the way that I want it while I’m on this journey passing through.’ Linden goes on to describe the Playhouse: “Rowe turned her house — alas, no longer standing — into the Playhouse, filling it with her art, hanging the trees in the yard with her creations as well as found-object adornments, and inviting friends, neighbors and strangers to explore. There were drive-by harassers lobbing rocks and firecrackers at the ‘hoodoo witch,’ but there was also Judith Alexander, scion of a prominent Atlanta family who would become Rowe’s friend, gallerist and champion.”

Golden Globe entertainment journalist Brent Simon writes: “Stylistically, This World Is Not My Own challenges documentary conventions in its mixture of forms and, most especially, its editorial construction. Working with editor Princess Hairston, co-directors Petter Ringbom and Marquise Stillwell execute a narrative vision attached more to feeling than strictly linear storytelling.“

The way the creatures of the film swirled in stories linking personal interviews with historical footage was masterful, magical really. Never moving too far away from Rowe’s artistic interpretations, fragments of her dream-like drawings would start to fill the screen as though Rowe was drawing in real-time. Because the film is not linear, it’s so much more “Nellie.” Rather than a consecutive storyline, the film is more a collection of stories woven together by elements of Rowe’s drawings, serving as a whimsical narrator, a colorful through-line, transitioning from one story to the next.

The many entertaining and insightful interviews with leaders of the time, museum curators, friends and family provided glimpses of Rowe’s personality and her generosity in sharing her Playhouse environment. One family member said – with a big smile and a chuckle, “She was a fun-going lady.” I especially enjoyed learning more about the unique and beautiful friendship between Rowe and her gallerist, Judith Alexander which is an important and relevant focus of the film.

At a gathering honoring Alexander’s life (shared on JA Foundation site), the artist’s great-grandnieces, Cheryl Mashack and Cathi Perry, described the unique relationship between Judith and Nellie Mae, using a quilt analogy: “The focal point consisted of two people Judith Alexander and Nellie Mae Rowe, although two different textures they were cut from the same cloth. Their business acquaintance grew into a relationship and from that into a wonderful friendship and from friendship into family that has spanned over two decades. Judith had a passion for art — especially Nellie Mae’s art — and together with their eccentric and often quirky ways they started to stitch the fabric of all our lives together. Judith with her big heart extended herself not only to Nellie but to Nellie’s family as well.….Judith had an unassuming manner but a very forthright way in getting her point across and letting you know exactly how she felt, and with this came her unyielding zeal to expose Nellie’s work to the world because of the joy it brought to her heart. She wanted this joy to become contagious to all those around her; however it was very difficult for her to part with any of her “Nellie’s” as she so affectionately called them.”

Marquise Stillwell, one of the film’s creators and directors, was present at the Cincinnati Art Museum and entertained questions after the screening. He described the making of the film taking 6 years and went on to say (paraphrasing), the film mixes traditional documentary techniques with 3-D animations and scripted scenes shot using the Playhouse models and created sets.

Following the film, I returned to 21c moments after the dining room closed, however, room service was available – score! The bartender made me a Basil Hayden Old Fashioned (big grin) to keep me company while waiting for a room delivery of seared sea scallops served with corn grits, rainbow chard and honshimeji mushrooms. It was damn good.

Morning coffee was set up in the restaurant hosted by one of the life-sized golden yellow penguins which is the 21c Museum Hotel designated color for Cincinnati. The penguins turn up around the property and play various roles in greeting, guarding and generally marking their territories. 21c Museum Hotel Cincinnati is a boutique hotel, contemporary art museum, and restaurant housed in downtown Cincinnati’s former Metropole Hotel, a 100-year-old landmark listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Among one of the largest private art museums in the United States, it is North America’s only collection dedicated solely to art of the 21st century.

There’s something about historic buildings that don’t always translate into welcoming, spacious lobbies – depending on previous configurations. I love a pronounced main entrance or a snappy foyer that properly greets you and peaks your curiosity at the same time. I found this particular 21c entrance confusing and oddly configured — wasn’t actually sure I had walked through the intended door. But then, my eye caught sight of a strange scultpural figure in the lobby, also a huge vivid purple photographic landscape, both part of 21c’s current exhibit, “The SuperNatural”. Short attention spans are not always a negative. Something I do love about 21c environments is their clever use of common areas and unexpected niches as exhibition space — often to my surprise and always to my delight. Given my short stay, I wasn’t able to take in the full exhibition like at other 21c locations I’ve visited (Durham and Nashville). The remaining five Museum Hotels are in my future. A colorful penguin punch card is underway.

Before hitting the road, I made a beeline for a recommended place to get a good Reuben – just a few blocks away. Downtown Cincinnati was bustling and I walked through an active town square — it was a perfect day — coolish and clear. Most of the people I saw or encountered were young — or at least younger than me — and I wondered if that was a city trait or just me feeling older. Later, I learned the diner I visited was an authentic old-school Cincinnati diner, Hathaways, there since 1957. One of those things you “stumble on” if you ask the right local. The Reuben sandwich was perfect, complete with ridged and broken Lay’s potato chips.

A final serendipitous treat occurred en route to the airport. From the backseat of my taxi, I saw a spaceship — yes, a spaceship — midway up a distant hillside, across Kentucky’s border. An all too familiar tie to the Tampa Bay area.

The Cincinnati Art Museum, 21c Cincinnati Museum Hotel, This World Is Not My Own, downtown Cincinnati — a complete sensory overload — any one of these experiences begs for more time to properly absorb and enjoy. I’ll be back!

Note from the author: Arthouse3 and Bay Art Files are currently working on bringing the film to St. Petersburg, Florida. To do this, we will need movie ticket buyers, a few volunteers and sponsorship dollars to bring in one of the directors to speak about the film. If you have an interest in any of these roles, please let me know soon. The number of committed individuals could sway the schedule! (kg@arthouse3.com)

Katherine Gibson, creator of ArtHouse3, works with clients to find and place regional art, objects and furniture. Gibson is an independent curator, art consultant and creative design maker-upper living in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Fall in Unordinary Love: Salman Toor in Tampa

Fall in Unordinary Love: Salman Toor in Tampa

by Richard Ellis

This spring, visitors of the Tampa Museum of Art (TMA) have the uncommon chance to view a profoundly whimsical exhibition of works by a preeminent contemporary painter. Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love, features more than forty-five paintings and works on paper completed between 2019 and 2022. The exhibition is organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and is on view at the TMA from February 23^rd through June 4^th, 2023.

Born in 1983, in Lahore, Pakistan, Salman Toor resides and works in New York City and exhibits internationally. His oeuvre primarily consists of dreamlike scenes, in which cartoonish figures appear suspended like marionettes, caught in the plotlines of ambiguous narratives. The stories are drawn from moments of the urban lives of imagined queer young men, as well as from the artist’s own lived experience and those of his friends. The emotional atmospheres of his canvases fluctuate between intimacy and isolation, contentment and embarrassment, and tenderness and violence.

This exhibition is important and timely as it draws attention to international human rights issues as well as domestic queer politics. In Pakistan, acts of homosexuality are punishable by life imprisonment, or even death in extreme cases.¹ In America, LGBTQ+ rights, representation and recreation are coming under fire from lawmakers, politicians, and homophobic and transphobic members of the public who are banning or restricting drag shows throughout the country.

On view in the museum’s newly constructed gallery space, the exhibition consists of oil paintings done on panel and canvas, several drawings done in charcoal, ink, and gouache, and two of the artist’s sketchbooks. This body of works offers conceptual, material, and technical variety while also showcasing Toor’s characteristic style. Despite the surreal quality of many of Toor’s paintings and the specificity of his subject matter, the moments that he constructs are deeply sensitive to the human condition. There is a naivete to his figures, but their innocence is occasionally broken by the salacious scenarios in which they appear entangled.

Toor’s paintings reward the visually literate and those well-versed in Western art history. Drawing from the European painting tradition, he invites us to traverse through centuries of time without ever leaving our contemporary moment behind. Toor brings this legacy into our times to confront colonial structures that still confine us. In postcolonial fashion, Toor turns the canon on its head by replacing the typical subjects of Western easel paintings with queer, brown-skinned boys and men. Toor demonstrates his mastery over the Western tradition in a bold act of subversion that begs the question of who owns whose art history.

_{Figure 1: Construction Men, Salman Toor, 2021, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in. (152.4 x 121.9 cm), photo by author.}

_{Figure 2: Les Raboteurs de Parquet (The Floor Scrapers), Gustave Caillebotte, 1875, oil on canvas, 40.2 x 57.7 in (102 x 146.5 cm), Google Arts and Culture.}

When visitors enter the gallery, they are immediately confronted by Construction Men (Figure 1), a scene that continues the homoerotic celebration of male laborers that can be traced back to Gustave Caillebotte’s The Floor Scrapers (Figure 2), of 1875, though with a campy flare evocative of costumes for The Village People. From there, visitors may circulate the room and explore the three thematic categories that the works are separated into, including desire, tradition, and family. Many of the paintings are neatly spaced along the horizon line of the gallery walls, with carefully adjusted spotlights illuminating each one. His smaller works, though, are clustered together on the south wall, in a way that evokes the salon-style displays of public galleries in the nineteenth century. This strategy slows down the viewing experience and aligns with Toor’s connection to artistic conventions of the past, but it also makes it difficult to see the details in each of them closely, especially for viewers whose vantage point is lower than others.

Not all the works in the catalog make an appearance at this venue. Two notable exclusions include The Latecomer, 2021, and the monumental Fag Puddle with Candle, Shoe and Flag, 2022, which is featured on the cover of the catalog edited by Asma Naeem and available for purchase at the Museum’s store. The painting is a self-referential triumph that blends symbols from Toor’s lexicon, including phalluses, shoes, used condoms, and tombstones. It is perhaps the standout of the show, but it is not on view at the TMA because it was swiftly purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Congratulations are in order for the artist as this painting is the first of his to be acquired by the prestigious institution, but I lament the missed opportunity for a Floridian audience to view this painting.

While the compositions that underly many of Toor’s canvases are taken from monuments of Early Modern European art, these works find themselves quite at home at the TMA, even though such a collection is conspicuously absent. The TMA has historically been known for its collection of classical art from Greece and Southern Italy, but its exhibition programming and the development of its permanent collection have also been centered around outlier art of the modern and postmodern eras. The humor, irony, postcolonial angst, and queer grunge, that we find on the surface of Toor’s paintings bear an uncanny affinity with the irreverent and kitschy contemporary art scene of the greater Tampa Bay area.

_{Figure 3: Cakes, Wayne Thiebaud, 1963, oil on canvas, (152.4 x 182.9 cm), Wikiart.}

Several of the works made for this exhibition pull directly from works in the Baltimore Museum of Art’s collection of European paintings from the 17^th– to the 19^th-centuries. Attention to Toor’s references to early modern art is well-established but has perhaps overshadowed his visual connections to later painters. Toor typically uses oil paints over a surface primed with dark brown acrylic paint. His style is painterly, with thick, visible brushstrokes. The built-up textures of his paintings have been described as frosting on a cake, not unlike Wayne Thiebaud, whose paintings of seemingly mundane desserts and pastries, such as Cakes (Figure 3), 1963, were imbued with a postmodern sensibility and likewise question notions of desire, consumption, class, and privilege.²

_{Figure 4: Night Capture, Salman Toor, 2021, oil on panel, 14 x 18 in. (35.6 x 45.7 cm), photo by author.}

The Western canon is not the only power structure that Toor seeks to upend. Toor also takes issue with the endemic homophobia that plagues his home country of Pakistan, as well as most other Muslim-majority nations. The perils that LGBTQ+ people face within these communities is a topic brought forth by several of Toor’s paintings, such as Stone Throwers, Night Capture (Figure 4), and The Vigil. The threat of violence compels us to hide beneath the protective cover of night and within the fickle safety of wooden areas, where individuals may cruise at their own risk. In Shadow Park, Toor provides us a glimpse into the underworld of queer desire that echoes the sexually charged nightmare-fantasies of Robert Gober’s The Heart is Not a Metaphor.

_{Figure 5: Cemetery with Dog, Salman Toor, 2022, oil on canvas, 43 x 36 in. (109.2 x 91.4 cm), photo by author.}

In some of Toor’s paintings such as Thunderstorm and Back Lawn, we see domestic gardens as a space for freedom and unbridled affection. In Cemetery with Dog (Figure 5), Toor explores a different setting entirely, in which the homoerotic paradise of Sa’di’s garden is now a graveyard.³ The scene has the isometric perspective of Persianate manuscript paintings, through which we peer down at above-ground graves and tombstones. Unlike most of his paintings, this one is conspicuously absent of any visible human figures, though it hardly feels like an empty landscape. By searching for a person, we come to the grim realization that a graveyard is never an empty landscape, as the ground literally contains invisible bodies. In the background, there are trees entwined, an established motif in painting, prose, and poetry from the Islamic world for lovers yearning to embrace one another.⁴ By conflating the garden with the cemetery, and life and death, this painting serves as a dark reminder of the risk of pursuing forbidden love.

Toor is known for his proclivity for green, a color that has, perhaps coincidentally, also enjoyed an emblematic role in Islamic culture. Green is the color of the Prophet Muhammad, who is said to have privileged the color above all others, as well as the color of paradise, which is envisioned as a garden.⁵ For modern artists in the West, such as Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Pablo Picasso, green indicates a sickness manifests on multiple levels. Toor says that he is aware of the poisonous associations with green, but for him, the color is “velvety, nocturnal, and comforting.”⁶ The conflicting potentialities for the symbolic significance of green in Toor’s paintings, in a way, queer the color itself.

At the heart of his work, Toor celebrates the common love found in causal romances of the sex-positive queer world by elevating it by giving it the treatment of one that is found beyond the realm of the ordinary. He celebrates these because they are valuable, and we take them for granted, forgetting that these small acts of seemingly meaningless affection are a luxury not afforded to all.

Glowing like the green light from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, these gleaming, verdant paintings shine into the night, beckoning us into a world of uninhibited frivolity, misplaced desire, and dangerous trysts. Like Nick Carraway, the narrating protagonist of the hazy tale, Toor seems to find dissatisfaction with the world in which he has entered, where love is free, and therefore made worthless. Lovers are had and then disposed. Forbidden love is no longer forbidden, and therefore has become ordinary. Toor gifts us a fresh perspective by showing the value that remains in public displays of affection and to show us that there is nothing at all ordinary about such love.

Salmon Toor: No Ordinary Love is on view at the Tampa Museum of Art through June 4, 2023. The exhibition is organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art.

About the author

Richard Ellis is an adjunct professor at the University of Tampa, in the Department of Art & Design, and at the University of South Florida, in the School of Art & Art History. He holds a B.A. and M.A., both in art history and from the University of South Florida. His areas of interest include Islamic art and architecture, modern and contemporary art of the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia, and the diasporas, as well as Orientalism.

Footnotes

“Pakistan,” Human Dignity Trust, accessed May 8, 2023, https://www.humandignitytrust.org/country-profile/pakistan/.
Asma Naeem, “Salman Toor’s Brown Boys,” in Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love, ed. Asma Naeem (New York and Baltimore: Gregory R. Miller & Co. and the Baltimore Museum of Art), 10.
Mika Natif, “The generative garden: Sensuality, male intimacy, and eternity in Govardhan’s illustration of Sa‘dī’s Gulistān,” in Eros and Sexuality in Islamic Art, ed. Francesca Leoni and Mika Natif (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2013), 3.
Michael Barry, “Illustrating ‘Attār: A Pictorial Meditation by Master Habīballāh of Mashhad in the Tradition of Master Bihzād of Herat,” in ‘Attār and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight, ed. Leonard Lewisohn and Christopher Shackle (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 148.
Mohammad Gharipour, Persian Gardens and Pavilions: Reflections in History, Poetry, and the Arts (London and New York, I.B. Taurus, 2013), 24.
Evan Moffitt, “Green as the Night” in Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love, ed. Asma Naeem (New York and Baltimore: Gregory R. Miller & Co. and the Baltimore Museum of Art), 49.

Bibliography

Barry, Michael. “Illustrating ‘Attār: A Pictorial Meditation by Master Habīballāh of Mashhad in the Tradition of Master Bihzād of Herat.” In ‘Attār and the Persian Sufi Tradition: The Art of Spiritual Flight, ed. Leonard Lewisohn and Christopher Shackle, 135-64. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006.

Gharipour, Mohammad. Persian Gardens and Pavilions: Reflections in History, Poetry, and the Arts. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2013.

Human Dignity Trust. “Pakistan.” Accessed May 8, 2023. www.humandignitarytrust.org/country-profile/pakistan/.

Naeem, Asma, ed. Salman Toor: No Ordinary Love. ed. New York and Baltimore: Gregory R. Miller & Co. and the Baltimore Museum of Art, 2022.

Natif, Mika. “The generative garden: Sensuality, male intimacy, and eternity in Govardhan’s illustration of Sa‘dī’s Gulistān.” In Eros and Sexuality in Islamic Art, ed. Francesca Leoni and Mika Natif, 43-64. Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2013.

Road Trip to the 21c Museum Hotel Nashville

by Katherine Gibson

Prelude

Before venturing to Nashville, there was a road trip to Durham, North Carolina, for my first 21c experience. Currently, there are nine 21c Museum Hotels, with plans for more, sprinkled across a few select states in mostly mid-sized cities. Each location exhibits museum-quality 21st-century art (21c) in a restored historic building, converted to a boutique hotel that always includes an inventive lively restaurant and bar. Durham was the closest 21c within driving distance of St. Petersburg and was offering a 2-for-1-night stay, so last August – mid-pandemic – I hit the road.

Upon arrival at the 21c Museum Hotel Durham, I was crushed to learn the restaurant space Counting House was still closed, although not surprised given the pandemic restrictions at that time. I could see through the expansive windows that, like the hotel, the restaurant was teeming with compelling artwork. The skeleton crew eventually allowed me to wander the large multi-room restaurant to view and photograph the art. In the center of the bar area, I was delighted to see Duke Riley’s work, as I had met him during a University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum (USF/CAM) artist talk related to a series of woodcut editions he had completed at USF‘s Graphicstudio.

The main exhibit, The Future is Female, was installed throughout the museum portion of the hotel. It was excellent. I loved seeing works by many favorite artists (Carry Mae Weems, Deborah Roberts, Marilyn Minter, Mickalene Thomas) – and again, was delighted to be alone with the work since only hotel guests were granted museum access at the time.

What was an initial grave disappointment – regarding access – turned out to be a private ocean of time and space. During most of my wanderings, I was the only person around which felt illicit and delicious. I couldn’t believe my strange fortune.

21c Museum Hotel Durham’s *Counting House* bar and restaurant, August 2020.
(Center triptych by Brooklyn-based Duke Riley)

Details of Duke Riley’s It Will Warm You Twice, 2015, Cigarettes on wood panels.

21c Museum Hotel Nashville Lobby

The wood carved figure of a woman was in mid-air with no obvious support. She was floating just beyond the reception desk, an ethereal greeter.

“She is suspended. Do you know how?” asked Brian, from behind the front desk. He was only too eager to tell me yet I wanted to see for myself.

Her only anchor was a hand-held leash that led to the head of a puma, bearing sharp teeth, whose beautiful fur skin was splayed out on the floor like a rug. As gorgeous as the fur of this animal was, my first instinct was to look away.

I am an easily overwhelmed visual sponge, not able to immediately compartmentalize, so the impact of this piece was, initially, too much to take in. Not until the third day did I examine what the artist Marc Fromm had created. I assumed it to be a complicated piece to produce, yet conveyed complete success in presentation. Seamlessly accomplished. Now I could look at the piece with sincere disbelief, rather than discomfort, although the discomfort remained beneath the surface. (I won’t spoil the technical magic – see image and resource links.)

The placement of Young lady with pet, as impressive and impactful as it was, would seem better served in a spacious, isolated corner rather than in the midst of a busy hotel lobby. Perhaps its arresting presence is precisely why it was chosen for the entry area.

Note to readers: Please don’t expect a review or a critique of artwork mentioned in this article. My musings are written more like diary entries, recording impressions of selected pieces and trip experiences. I’ve provided a resource section at the end with links to additional information. Also, 21cMuseumHotels/Nashville.co m provides an excellent 3d visual tour of featured artwork complete with recorded content per exhibit area.

Marc Fromm, *Young lady with pet*, 2010, basswood, puma, oil resin color, steel.
This is a screen shot from 21cNashville.com virtual tour.

Young lady with pet set the stage for many other impactful figures I would soon encounter as I processed the powerful Fragile Figures exhibition.

Per the exhibit brochure: “Fragile Figures: Beings and Time…illuminates the range and complexity of human emotions, revealing intersections between vulnerability and power – social, cultural, and political – in contemporary portraiture. Individual and group identity, and the forces that shape how we see self and others, are approached through direct references to noted works from art history, connecting past events to current issues.”

Fragile Figures is beautifully curated by the 21c Museum Director and Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites, and is visually, emotionally and intellectually compelling – and certainly relevant. It is also a heavy and loaded exhibit sharing stunning, controversial, chilling, and sometimes heart-breaking work by artists from the vast contemporary art collection of the 21c founders, Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, of Louisville, Kentucky, where the original 21c Museum Hotel opened in 2006.

Fragile Figures in Nashville spanned three floors and meandered into several hallways and smaller rooms. It felt huge and daunting so I had to tackle it in smaller doses. Just when I thought I had seen the most impactful piece, there would be another mind-blower around the corner. Many of the pieces and installations resonated strongly with me and I found I needed to pace myself so I decided to focus on a few favorites rather than write about the whole exhibit.

After a full afternoon of digesting the work on a first walk-through, I was spent, and more than ready for a cocktail at Gray & Dudley, the in-house bar and restaurant. To my delight, all the specialty drink titles were Moira Rose (of Schitt’s Creek fame) inspired. I was torn between “The crows have eyes” or “David! Stop acting like a disgruntled pelican!” but instead ordered, “Where is Bebe’s chamber?” – nary a bad choice. To top that off, I ordered seared catfish, with creamy southern grits, to happily devour in my room where Ted Lasso was awaiting (a beloved Jason Sudeikis comedy).

Foreboding Figures

The series of dark and striking figures by Mohau Modisakeng were my favorite pieces in the exhibit. Their stark, large-scale shadowy beauty drew me into the end of a long hallway. Soon I was surrounded by these larger than life foreboding figures holding weapons. The hallway was not wide so I started to feel a bit claustrophobic. Usually, I would want to see pieces of this scale out in the open, with space around each of them, but in the crowded hallway their menacing impact was condensed and eerily palpable.

Below are a few of the images I took. Because of the glass and the lighting proximity, reflections of other warriors loomed in the background. Their multiplying presence was haunting enough – add to that, this strange faint music from down the hall and I decided to call it a day.

Mohau Modisakeng, Large-scale photography, from the Dikubo series.

Intrigued by this artist and his influences, I found an informative write-up by Joe Nolan, in White Hot Magazine (December 2020), who shared the following:

Mohau Modisakeng’s massive self-portraits are formally beautiful works of black-and-white photography. The deep blacks of the South African artist’s skin, garments and accessories are printed on glowing white watercolor paper, creating a dramatic contrast between the images of the artist and their backgrounds.

Modisakeng’s childhood in Soweto was marked by the oppressive violence of the last days of South Africa’s Apartheid-era – a life and death contrast between black and white. The artist’s photos examine violence, the instruments of violence, and the effects they leave on the bodies and psychologies of those affected by them. In a suite of images Modisakeng is armed with machete-like blades and cattle prods, and draped in a long black robe – the garment recalls traditional robes of African tribes as well as the garb of the Western legal and religious classes. Most striking is his donning of fedora hats over the kind of leather blinders you’d normally strap to a horse’s head. The blinders nod to the willful ignorance required to sustain a violent racist regime. The hat speaks to the gullibility and complicity of the educated, professional class which is most vulnerable to propaganda, and who benefit from maintaining an oppressive status quo.

Jane’s Hideaway

My sister Jane joined me for one night and we stumbled on a charming low-key little place a block from 21c – ironically called Jane’s Hideaway. We wandered in for a drink and headed toward a long bar in the back. As it turned out, the bartender (James) did indeed make a good Old Fashioned so we got comfortable and enjoyed the rotation of performers, especially Sierra Ferrell, who was completely outstanding (look her up).

We ordered another round, along with braised pork belly (I mean, please) and THE best Brussel spouts I’ve ever had, fried, with some sort of slightly sweet glaze. For a non-vegetable fan, this is high praise. It was great fun hanging with my awesome sister and happening upon this gem of a place.

Looking south on Broadway, which is a major entertainment district renowned for dive bars and live country music. Nashville-based singer and songwriter Sierra Ferrell (as shared on the site WallpaperFlare.com).

Head Hunter

Two photographs stayed with me as I meandered through the exhibit. I kept thinking about connections to the work of Tampa Bay photographer Selina Roman, who often photographs figures without showing faces. Sometimes her subjects are in masks or costumes, or maybe they are turned away from the camera or wrapped in fabric or material.

The first connection occurred when I came upon a Nan Goldin image of a figure, back to camera, wrapped in sheer material, standing in front of a drape-drawn window. Simon Silhouetted in the Window, Suite 22, NYC was installed in an upper floor hallway, among a few other stand-alone photographs. The wall text excerpt reads: “Nan Goldin began taking snapshot-like photographs of her lovers and friends in New York City in the mid-1970’s, which evolved into a groundbreaking project called “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency…”

The second connection was a day later, when I discovered a relatively hidden image, Head Hunter, by Denise Grunstein, installed high up on the other side of the reception area. It was a head and shoulders profile of a red-haired figure with hair wrapping around so the face wasn’t visible. The background was a solid vivid blue and the only other feature in the photo was an antiquated-looking metal contraption, making light contact, appearing like it could clamp or hold a head.

The above snapshots were taken in the exhibit space but because of their particular location and glare, they were difficult to capture clearly. Denise Grunstein, left; Nan Goldin, right.

I was glad that Head Hunter was in the vicinity of Marc Fromm’s Young lady with pet, given their shared metal elements – a steel leash leading to the toothy head of a puma and the metal head holder – each attached to an isolated figure. What could be a vulnerable, or even dangerous situation for either figure, given the strong-looking hardware that could cause pain or could lead to pain (puma) – doesn’t read that way. Neither the wood figure, nor the hair-covered head conveys fear – at least not to me.

The Head Hunter wall text read: “…Set against an expansive azure sky, the profile, whose features are obscured by gleaming red tresses, suggests a fetishistic fascination with hair, which has long been associated with feminine beauty and fecundity. The saturated sky surrounding the bodiless head, held stable by a centuries-old hairdressing tool, emphasizes the cinematic and the surreal in this at once seductive and unsettling vision.”

A screen shot from the *Fragile Figures* virtual museum tour; circles mark the online audio options. In the foreground, Marc Fromm’s *Young lady with pet* on the left; on the right, Denise Gundstein’s *Head Hunter.*

Matador Lady Killer

A show-stopping piece by Anastasia Schipani, Matador Lady Killer – is a rich, multi-layered, hand-sewn tapestry, twenty-six feet wide, created over a seven-year period as Schipani was processing the murder of her beloved.

On her website, Schipani shares: “While living in Bangkok, my Thai lover was killed by a hit man. This personal tragedy created a before and after in my life and work. While recovering, back in the States, I worked in a Spanish nightclub whose walls were decorated with vintage bullfight posters. My consciousness forged a link between the brutal public spectacle of the bullfight and the cruel loss of my lover’s life…”

The piece is full of beautiful little story scenarios and connections. Many details when examined closely share some kind of tension or contradiction – lovely little fish surrounded by pointy sharks; plump birds too near a coiled snake; a smiling pin-up-style beauty under a jewel-laden tree, in proximity to a headless strong male body. The entire presentation is overwhelming in its vivid, technicolor hues toggling a tightrope between danger and bliss, good and evil, gleeful happiness and horrific tragedy.

It seemed inappropriate that the view of this expansive and stunning tapestry was visually interrupted by one of the life-sized 21c signature penguins (deep turquoise is Nashville’s assigned color). Sometimes blocked sightlines are unavoidable due to space constraints but this was not the case here, the tapestry was in the largest gallery, and the penguin could have easily served its branding role in a number of other places.

There are huddles of same-colored penguins for each 21c location and they are known to be on the move, sharing hospitality, showing up in unexpected places throughout the properties.

Site Specific

I’ve only been to two of the nine 21c Museum Hotels but in both of these locations, there was use of existing building traits in unique ways. In Durham, the building is a former bank with a large walk-in vault in the basement that was cleverly incorporated into an installation.

In Nashville, there was a one-off lower street-level window near the corner that had an interior shelf-like sill with an odd collection of random things (i.e. yellow cone, small plastic unicorn toy, orange ball). Since I passed it coming and going often, it fascinated me every time. I found it hard to photograph between the dirty outside window and the dusty inside surface, as though Boo Radley emptied his pockets and left his collected treasures undisturbed.

21c Museum Hotel Nashville’s window of curiosity.

The basement vault at the 21c Museum Hotel Durham.

I was continuously curious about this quirky little find and enjoyed making up stories about who would put together a collection like that. Wait. I know who – Tampa Bay area artist Ry McCullough! Coincidentally, McCullough has a current exhibit of objects showing in Gallery114 on the Ybor City campus of Hillsborough Community College. [Read the recent BAF article by Tony Palms]

Top: 21c Nashville’s window of curiosity; Bottom, detail from Tampa-based Ry McCullough’s *Themes for the American Kestrel* currently on display at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery114 in Tampa.

Elevate

The hotel’s website reveals: “Elevate at 21c” presents temporary exhibitions of works by artists living and working in the communities surrounding each 21c Museum Hotel property. Those I observed were installed in the immediate elevator area per floor, and my favorite was by Nashville-based Duncan McDaniel seen below.

Duncan McDaniel, *Across the Clouds*, 2018, Various metals, acrylic and LED lighting.
Screen shot from 21cNashville.com website.

As I was watching the color tones slowly move into different shades, I thought of the recent Lights On Tampa public art installation by Erwin Redl, Circles Unity, a series of synchronized LED color-changing circles lining the darkened underpass of the Tampa Convention Center along Channelside Drive.

Erwin Redl, *Circles Unity,* 2021.
Light installation with 31 ring-shaped programable RGBW LED-fixtures and circular white reflective disks.
Commissioned for Lights on Tampa by the City of Tampa.
Partial installation view courtesy of the LightsOnTampa.org website.

I greatly appreciate the 21c Museum Hotel’s long-standing commitment to supporting artists at all levels of their careers. Through purchasing and collecting works, to exhibiting and promoting works, these effective philanthropists provide artists multiple ways to gain experience and exposure – not to mention being included in an important collection of contemporary art.

The 21c Museum Hotel concept integrates three important elements that will always get my attention – historic building preservation, high-quality contemporary art, and delicious hospitality. What an intoxicating trifecta!

About the author

Katherine Gibson, creator of ArtHouse3, is an independent curator and regional art consultant living in St. Petersburg, Florida. Gibson received a 2018 Individual Artist Award from the St. Petersburg Arts Alliance for her Drive-by Window Project and was selected for an ArtsUp Grant by Creative Pinellas as creator and curator of the 2019 summer exhibition Tongue & Groove.

Resources

Prelude

21c Museum Hotels

21c Durham “The Future is Female” is on view through December 2021.

Duke Riley at USF’s Graphicstudio

Nashville Lobby

21c Nashville | “Fragile Figures: Beings and Time” is on view through January 2022. Link to the virtual tour Fragile Figures.

Marc Fromm

Foreboding Figures

Head Hunter

Matador Lady Killer

Anastasia Schapana

Site Specific

Ry McCullough

Ry McCullough’s Themes for the American Kestrel is on view at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery114 in Tampa, Florida, through June 24, 2021. By appointment. Tampa-based artist and writer Tony Wong Palms provides observations about his visit to the gallery for Bay Art Files

Elevate

Duncan McDaniel

Lights On Tampa

One more thing

– Give yourself over to floating, even a little bit.

“Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled— to cast aside the weight of facts and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking into the white fire of a great mystery…”

– Mary Oliver, House of Light