Tag: Tampa

Joseph Veach Noble: Through the Eye of a Collector

by Dr. Robert Steven Bianchi

In 1986, the Tampa Museum of Art acquired 175 ancient objects from the eminent collection of Joseph Veach Noble, thought to comprise the largest private collection of Athenian vases in North America at the time. This acquisition became the cornerstone of the Museum’s burgeoning permanent collection of antiquities. This article (1) highlights significant events in the life and career of Mr. Noble; (2) presents the significant personalities and events which led to the acquisition of his collection by the Tampa Museum of Art;  (3) assesses the importance of that collection; and (4) passes in review some of the more interesting objects in the extraordinary exhibition currently on view at the Museum.

JOSEPH VEACH NOBLE 
It’s funny sometimes, isn’t it, when an accidental hobby develops into a life-long pursuit which is successfully integrated into one’s professional life? The trajectory of the life and career of Joseph Veach Noble, whose career and collection are being celebrated by the Tampa Museum of Art, is a case in point. (Figure 1)

Figure 1
Joseph Veach Noble, captured in a pensive moment in this photograph taken in 1965, as he thinks about an Attic, black-figure Pan-Athenaic amphora after consulting the seminal work by John Beazley. Vases such as these were awarded to victors of athletic contests staged at Athens, which feature an image of the goddess Athena, the patron of that city.
(Yousuf Karsh (Armenian-born Canadian, 1908-2002), Portrait of Joseph Veach Noble (black and white photograph). Library and Archives Canada, 1987-054, vol. 197, sitting 12547, no. 35.
Photograph courtesy of the Yousuf Karsh Archive)

THE FORMATIVE YEARS
Mr. Noble was born in Philadelphia in 1920. He honed his collecting interests early in life when as a child, he trudged up and down the planted rows of vegetables on his paternal aunt’s small farm in rural New Jersey in search of native American arrow-heads; later, he also collected fossils. His interest in antiquity was piqued during the Saturday mornings spent at programs for school-aged students hosted by the University of Pennsylvania for which he, as a young, project leader, created models of pharaonic and Roman imperial villas, reinforced by visits to the Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia with its collection of casts of classical sculpture, and his study of Latin in high school. He took art classes, drawing still-lives in charcoal or conte crayon. Noble would while away the evening hours at home learning how to photograph and develop negatives in the family kitchen turned darkroom by his father who had worked his way through dental school from income earned by photographing dentures and restorations

EMPLOYMENT NOT A DEGREE
Mr. Noble enrolled in the University of Pennsylvania as a pre-med student, but never graduated because concurrent with attending classes he was also a member of the non-university affiliated Photographic Club of Philadelphia which enabled him to exhibit at the Philadelphia Art Alliance. Six of his photographs are on view in the present exhibition from which one can gain an impression of the scope of his work. (Figure 2) By his own admission, Mr. Noble explained how he impulsively responded to a  random call to that Club for a full-time still photographer from a Philadelphia-based firm specializing in what one now terms film. He put his academic studies on the back-burner by attending night classes. He soon abandoned college altogether to devote himself to his full time post  in 1946 which, shortly after his hire, required him to master the art of cinematography. Two years later he produced and directed, Photography in Science, which won the 1948 Venice Film Festival award for scientific documentaries. Thereafter Mr. Noble was hired by  Film Counselors, Inc. in New York as their  Executive Vice-President. He now had motive and opportunity for pursuing his collecting interests in earnest as his quotidian included repeated visits to dealers in New York City and an ever-increasing awareness of dealers abroad, whose inventory could be perused through catalogues and photographs. 

Figure 2
Youth by Joseph Veach Noble Mr. Noble’s interests in photography, nurtured in his youth by his father, eventually led to his career as a cinematographer.

(Joseph Veach Noble (American, 1920-2007), Youth (black and white photograph; undated, ca. 1945-1956). Tampa Museum of Art, Gift of Joseph Veach Noble Collection, 1991.009.002)

A VERY CLOSE ENCOUNTER
Mr. Noble’s eureka moment occurred  in 1953 when he acquired a very large vase, 21 inches in height, which was described as an Etruscan vase representing a mounted  Amazon. Mr. Noble, justifiably proud of this recent acquisition, showed its photo to a European dealer who chanced to be in New York at that time. The dealer urged Mr. Noble to contact Dr. Dietrich von Bothmer, the assistant curator in the Greek and Roman Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who, it was reported, was in the process of writing a book about the Amazons, those legendary, formidable female warriors of ancient Greek mythology. And so an  appointment was arranged for November.

As an art advisor myself, I am often placed in a seemingly awkward situation in which I am obliged to inform a collector of a mistake. As Dr. von Bothmer recalls the meeting, his assessment of that vase was ruthless.  The vase was not Etruscan. It was created in Apulia, in South Italy. Furthermore, the subject was not a mounted Amazon, but rather a  generic South Italian warrior. I t was the dealer who was to be faulted for the erroneous information, but the collector should have been more circumspect in his blanket acceptance of the data. The critique, admittedly disappointing, made a profound impression upon Mr. Noble, who volunteered that, undaunted, he would still seek out that curator’s opinion in future. 

HANDS-ON EXPERIMENTAL ARCHAEOLOGY    
On subsequent visits, Dr. von Bothmer introduced Mr. Noble to his colleague, Christine Alexander. She then orchestrated his European trip in 1954, a kind of pub crawl during which the Noble family visited museums and  dealers in Rome, London, and Paris.  The culmination of that trip was a personal visit with Homer and Dorothy Thompson, stalwarts of the excavations of the Agora, or market place, of ancient Athens, which was the flag ship of the archaeological activities in Greece of the  American School of Classical Studies. That meeting reinforced Mr. Noble’s  interest in the technical processes by which Greek vases were crafted as he mined Athenian clay for use in his experiments at home involving a kiln in the basement of his home. On view in the current exhibition are examples of the actual objects that Mr. Noble fired in that kiln. (Figure 4)

Figure 4
These four plaques represent some of the examples of experimental archaeology which Mr. Noble conducted using the kiln in the basement of his home. Here he is experimenting with the chemical composition of the black glaze used by potters in ancient Athens.
(Noble’s experiments [ceramic plaques; undated, ca. early 1960s]. Tampa Museum of Art, Joseph Veach Noble Collection)

Every cloud has a silver lining.  A few months later, in January, Professor A. D. Trendall, an internationally recognized authority on South Italian vases who was based in Australia, came to the States and was shown photos of the vase. Professor Trendall’s research had enabled him to group those vases into categories. Mr. Noble’s vase was an outstanding exemplar of one of his groups. In keeping with academic practice, since most of the classical vases were neither signed by potter nor painter,  vases are assigned a name generally based on their present location. Accordingly Professor Trendall assigned that specific group of  Apulian vases to The Maplewood Painter, named after the town in suburban New Jersey in which Mr. and Mrs. Noble were residing.  (figure 3)

Figure 3a-b
Dr. Dietrich von Bothmer’s ruthless critique of this vase which revealed that the mounted warrior was not an Amazon but rather a generic depiction of a warrior cemented his friendship and collaboration with Mr. Noble. This vase was then to become known as the eponymous Maplewood Painter vase, the name given to this classification of vessels by Prof. A. D. Trendall, in honor of the Noble’s hometown in New Jersey where Mr. Noble’s collection was housed.
(Eponymous Maplewood Painter vase (ceramic column krater; Apulia, Italy; late Classical period, ca. 360-350 bce). Tampa Museum of Art, Joseph Veach Noble Collection, Museum Purchase in part with funds donated by Mr. and Mrs. William Knight Zewadski, 1986.102)

ULTERIOR MOTIVES
Contact with Dr. von Bothmer continued. He, then, with a hidden agenda of his own, introduced Mr. Noble to Mr. James Joseph Rorimer, the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mr. Noble’s account of that visit, in the director’s Manhattan apartment, is fascinating because it demonstrated how Mr. Rorimer’s very long and drawn out conversation was actually, in hindsight, a camouflaged job interview, which lead to Mr. Noble’s appointment in 1956 as that institution’s Operating Administrator.  

SCIENCE IN THE SERVICE OF ART
Now, as a colleague of Dr. von Bothmer, Mr. Noble could spend his time every day before his official duties began and after they had ended in prolonged contact with an enormous collection of Greek vases. He now had added resources at his disposal to continue his research into the technical processes by which Greek vases were manufactured because Mr. Noble, as Dr. Suzanne Murray, remarked, 

….not only collected the finer examples, but also was interested in the pots that showed mistakes: misfiring that failed to turn figures from red to black, spalling that showed the clay had not been properly prepped, ancient repairs to broken vessels. These less-than-perfect products helped Mr. Noble with his research.

Many of these “mistakes” are on view in this exhibition. (figure 5 )

Figure 5
Mr. Noble was interested in “mistakes” made by ancient potters. This lump of clay is a fragment of a type of wine cup called a kylix. The potter probably crumpled the cup while it was still malleable because its shape did not come out successfully, as compared to Figure 11. Perhaps it was used as a support in the kiln as it was actually fired in this state. It is among the oldest artefacts in the Noble collection.
(Crumpled wine cup (ceramic kylix fragment; Pylos, Messenia, Greece; Mycenaean period, ca. 1400 bce). Tampa Museum of Art, Joseph Veach Noble Collection, 1986.005)

Mr. Noble was also keenly aware of the fact that Ms. Gisela Marie Augusta Richter, a former curator and predecessor of Dr. von Bothmer, had taken classes in throwing and firing pottery which provided her with the hands-on knowledge from which to draw for her publications about aspects of Greek vases. As instructive as those publications were, and still are, their subject matter was restricted to the physical manipulation of the clay, whereas Mr. Noble’s concerns focused on the chemistry involved, such as the component elements of the glazes used and how those elements were effected by the temperature within the kiln. He summarized the results of his investigations in an article published in 1960, which he expanded into a book published five years later. So significant were his observations that a revised  edition, published in 1988, still remains one of the first go-to sources.

FINGERING A FORGERY WITH A PEN KNIFE AND A PRIVATE EYE 
In the late 1950’s, during one of his by now routine visits through the museum’s galleries, his attention was drawn to a monumental, Etruscan terracotta statue of a warrior which had been given pride of place by virtue of  the way it was exhibited. (Figure 6) It had become in many ways the trade mark for the museum’s classical collections, although some nay-sayers were progressively expressing grave reservations about its authenticity. Aware of the controversy, Mr. Noble’s attention was arrested by the presence of its black glaze. He reasoned that an analysis of the chemical composition of that glaze might help resolve the question of its authenticity. In order to do so, he needed a sample, which he candidly admitted he obtained by surreptitiously taking his pen-knife out of one of his pockets which he used to scrape off a sample of the glaze when the attention of the gallery’s guard was temporarily distracted. In possession of that precious sample, Mr. Noble recognized he faced a conundrum. If the glaze were tested by the museum’s own staff and deemed to be ancient, conspiracy theorists could claim the analysis was rigged so as not to condemn the authenticity of the warrior. He, therefore, resolved to entrust the sample to a disinterested, but highly competent, third party who would analyze the sample in confidence. Within a short period of time, the results of the spectroscopic analysis were received which revealed that the coloring agent for the glaze was manganese, not iron. Magnanese was never  employed before the late Medieval period; it was iron on which the potters of ancient vases exclusively relied as their coloring agent.  

Figure 6
The monumental “Etruscan warrior” which was exposed as a modern forgery by Mr. Noble because of his analysis of the black glaze found on its surfaces and his orchestration of cloak-and-dagger face-to-face encounters with the forger.

(Colossal Etruscan terracotta warrior (Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 21.195). Image taken from Gisela M. A. Richter, “Etruscan Terracotta Warriors in the Metropolitan Museum of Art,” MMA Papers 6 (1937), pl. 1)

Realizing that corroborating evidence would substantially support his case, Mr. Noble then enlisted Dr. von Bothmer’s assistance. Like every competent curator who meticulously tracks the art market, Dr. von Bothmer  had maintained files of dealers, their inventories, their associates, and other data that he deem so necessary to document the provenance, or chain-of-possession, of the classical vases which were the area of his expertise. The two then collated the data from those files with the museum’s own acquisition records which revealed that the warrior had been acquired in pieces over the course of three separate purchases made in 1915, 1916, and 1921.The pieces were then re-assembled by the museum. The vendor’s identify was known, but Dr.von Bothmer’s files revealed that that antiquarian often worked in partnership with another individual who might be able to shed additional light on the purchases. Via a complicated series of cloak-and-dagger operations not unlike those detailed in detective novels, Mr. Noble, via his  cinematic connections, secured the services of a private investigator who traveled to Rome and tracked down the partner who was then actively manufacturing fake, bronze Etruscan statuettes for the tourist trade. Maneuvering like a chess master  because of the partner’s steadfast reluctance to discuss the matter, Mr. Noble then successfully arranged for Dr. von Bothmer, primed in advance on  how to conduct the conversation,  to travel to Rome for a face-to-face, during which the partner admitted that he had indeed used bioxide of manganese in  his manufacturing of the warrior. Bingo!  The museum went public in February 1961 with its announcement on Valentine’s Day that the warrior was indeed counterfeit. 

WITH SOME HELP FROM TUTANKHAMUN
Among the objects which were included in the acquisition of the Noble collection is a wooden box, across the lid of which in black ink was scrawled the warning, CAUTION! NATRON. Handle & Unpack with Care. The contents of that box together with other items including linen, pottery vases, and floral wreaths, were part of a find which was excavated by Theodore M. Davis in the Valley of the Kings. The entire find was subsequently associated with the funeral of Tutankhamun, the contents of which were collected by the mortuary priests and purposefully buried in a pit dug expressly for their interment in keeping with religious requirements which prohibited their disposal as trash. In compliance with all existing laws, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was permitted to acquire as acquisitions a selection of objects from that find.

Other hand-written notations on that same lid indicate that the box contained a bag of natron,  a naturally occurring mixture of sodium carbonate decahydrate (or soda ash) and sodium bicarbonate (also called baking soda), along with small quantities of sodium chloride and sodium sulfate. (Figure 7) Natron was the primary material employed to desiccate, or dry out, the body, during the mummification process.

Figure 7
The box containing two bags of natron, a naturally occurring mixture of sodium carbonate decahydrate and sodium bicarbonate (also called baking soda), along with small quantities of sodium chloride and sodium sulfate from the so-called Embalmers’ Cache of Tutankhamun. Mr. Noble used that material in his use of experimental archaeology which help him to document the technological processes by which ancient Egyptian faience was manufactures. That box and its contents are on view in this exhibition together with examples of the results of Mr. Noble’s experimentation.

(Bag of natron (linen bag; Valley of the Kings, West Thebes, Egypt; New Kingdom, 18th Dynasty, ca. 1323 bce) and Noble’s experiments (faience figurines and steatite; undated, ca. late 1960s), on view in the exhibition at the Tampa Museum of Art, Joseph Veach Noble Collection. Photography: Paige Bosca)

But Mr. Noble understood that natron was also used as a principal ingredient in the manufacture of ancient Egyptian faience, anciently termed tekhenit, a glazed material, generally turquoise-blue in color, which was used to create a wide variety of  shining, glistening objects from beads for jewelry to deluxe vases. (Figure 8) His exploration of the technique by which faience was manufactured went hand-in-glove with his work on the black glaze used in the creation of Greek pottery. In 1969 Mr. Noble published the results of his research about the processes by which ancient Egyptian faience was manufactured.

Figure 8
An original, faience aryballos, or ointment flask, from the collection of Mr. Noble, which he used in conjunction with his experimental archaeology to document the technical processes by which faience, an ancient glazed material, was manufactured. The diamond pattern on the walls of this flask were intentionally created so that the vase would not slip from the grasp of the fingers of its owner while applying its slippery contents.

(Diamond-patterned oil flask (faience aryballos; Rhodes, Greece; Archaic period, ca. 600-550 bce). Tampa Museum of Art, Joseph Veach Noble Collection, 1986.006)

FIRST IMPRESSIONS 

Mr. Noble resigned his position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1970 in order to assume the role of director of the Museum of the City of New York.  Despite that change in his employment status, Mr. Noble’s reputation as a scholar and consummate connoisseur and collector of classical vases continued unabated and was universally recognized. And as a collector and museum official, he was accustomed to the common practice of lending objects to institutions for temporary exhibitions. So, it was only a matter of course that he was asked and consented to loan three of his vases to the very first exhibition of antiquities ever mounted by the Tampa Museum of Art. That show, Styles and Lifestyles of the Ancient World, premiered here on March 1, 1983.  Ms. Genevieve Linnehan, the Curator of Collections (1979-1992) at the Tampa Museum of Art whose speciality was modern art, organized the exhibition, enlisting the assistance of Mr. William Knight Zewadski (“Bill’) and  Dr. Suzanne Murray, who had earned her doctorate in ancient art from the University of Minnesota and was affiliated with the University of South Florida.

THE ART OF NETWORKING

PAUL JENNEWEIN AND JOSEPH NOBLE
Paul Jennewein of Philadelphia was a noted American sculptor whose oeuvre included the massive sculptural pediment adorning the façade of the south east entrance of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (figure 9)  Jim Jennewein, his son, and Joseph Noble both fellow Philadelphians, were friends who also shared their mutual service on the board of Brookgreen Gardens. It was Joseph Noble who had suggested to Paul Jennewein that he leave his lifework of sculpture to Tampa. That suggestion turned into a bequest in 1978, when approximately 2,500 sculptures, models, drawings, medals, and related ephemera from his estate were bequeathed to the Tampa Bay Art. Part of that collection is now on exhibition C.Paul Jennewein (April 16, 2023–2025) at the Museum through 2025. 

Figure 9
These models for the pediment of the Philadelphia Museum of Art by the Philadelphia-based artist C. Paul Jennewein are part of his estate bequeathed to the Tampa Museum of Art. His friendship with Mr. Noble enabled members of his family to network with the team from Tampa Bay in the initial discussions with Mr. Noble which led to the eventual acquisition of the Noble collection by the Tampa Museum of Art.

(C. Paul Jennewein (German-American, 1890-1978), models for the pediment of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, on view in Sketches and Sculptures: A Study of C. Paul Jennewein at the Tampa Museum of Art, June 13, 2020 – February 28, 2021. Photography: Philip LaDeau)

Jim Jennewein’s wife, Joan, would later recall a conversation in which her father-in-law stated that Mr. Noble was reluctant to donate  his collection to a large, established institution where it would get lost. If on the other hand, it was given to a smaller museum it would really be seen. Armed with such a position, Jim Jennewein then suggested to Mr. Noble on May 12, 1984 that he give the collection to the Tampa Museum of Art. Mr. Noble countered  by stating that he would be willing to sell the collection to the Tampa Museum of Art for one million dollars.

Mr. Zewadski then picked up the ball and continued to run with it. On November 26, 1984 Mr. Noble sent Mr. Zewadski the card catalogue together with seven volumes of photographs of his collection. Mr. Andy Maass then  wrote to Mr. Noble, who incidentally was Mr. Maass’s first employer,  on February 13, 1985, explaining that although he was only two months into his tenure as director of the Tampa Museum of Art he would be interested in the loan of the collection for a temporary exhibition which would run from December 1985 through February 1986. 

AN UNFORESEEN PROBLEM
The planning for such an exhibition ran into a snag because Ms. Genevieve Linnehan was scheduled to take maternity leave. She was of the opinion, which was widely-shared by others, that any effort to acquire the Noble collection would be enhanced by the presence of an individual with an advanced degree in ancient art. The issue was satisfactorily resolved when Dr. Murray, who had already collaborated with Ms. Genevieve Linnehan and Mr. Zewadski on the first exhibition of antiquities at the museum, agreed to serve as the guest curator for the Noble collection.

THE ON-SITE PERSONAL INSPECTION
Mr. Zewadski mobilized Mr. Maass and Dr. Murray on May 22, 1985, for a road trip that brought them to New York and New Jersey where they visited the offices of Mr. Noble in the city and his home in Maplewood.  Dr. Murray recalls that the visit was great fun. She saw the Maplewood Krater (Figure 3) sitting on a TV console and the Neptune statue (Figure 10)  standing on the stair landing.

It was such a unique combination of the mundane and modern with the precious and antique. He then produced the gold necklace and earrings to show us—so delicate—which his wife had never seen, and seemed a little \reluctant to include in the deal!

The visit concluded with trip to Drew University where some of Mr. Noble’s vases were featured in a loan exhibition. Days later Mr. Zewadski sent the seven volumes of photographs of the Noble collection together with numerous copies of articles which had been published about that collection to Mr. Maass.

Figure 10
The statue of Poseidon/Neptune, the Graeco-Roman god of the sea, which Dr. Murray described as seeing for the first time on a landing of the staircase in the Maplewood home of the Nobles. This statue was one of the sources of inspiration for the special loan exhibition, Poseidon and the Sea: Myth, Cult, and Daily Life, mounted by former curator, Dr. Seth D. Pevnik, which ran at Tampa from June-November 2014 before moving on to its second venue at the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska.

(Neptune with Dolphin (marble sculpture; Rome, Italy; Roman Imperial period, ca. 50-100 ce), on view in the exhibition at the Tampa Museum of Art, Joseph Veach Noble Collection, 1986.135. Photography: Paige Bosca)

A STRATEGY FOR THE FINANCIAL PACKAGE
Moving quickly within a month, Mr. Maass then formally requested the museum’s board to consider the acquisition of the collection which lead to the immediate formation of a subcommittee of the museum’s Acquisitions Committee whose members were so tasked.  The City of Tampa then pledged a contribution of $250,000.00, representing  25% of the asking price.

On July 29, 1985 Mr. Maass wrote to Mr. Norman Hickey, the [Hillsborough] County Administrator, seeking a contribution from the county. He pointed out that the one million dollar price tag was a good deal because the collection had been appraised at $1,737,250.00.  Furthermore, if the $250,000.00 were to be used as a downpayment, the collection could be on view as early as December. On September 3, after a very convincing presentation by Messrs. Zewadski and Maass, who aggressively advocated for the purchase, the County voted to commit a quarter of a million dollars, payable over four years, to be applied to the purchase price.

There were still some loose ends to tie up, but the acquisition of the Noble collection for the Tampa Museum of Art was now a done deal, which was celebrated on October 26, at Pavillion V, the gala benefit of the Tampa Museum of Art which foregrounded Mr. Noble as the honoree. (Figure 11)

Figure 11
The principles at Pavillion V (October 26, 1985 ) the gala benefit of the Tampa Museum of Art which foregrounded Mr. Noble as the honoree. From left to right, Mr. Willian Knight Zedwadski, Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Veach Noble, Dr. Richard E. and Mary Perry, whose endowment funds the Richard E. Perry Curator of Greek and Roman Art, currently held by Dr. Branko van Oppen de Ruiter.

(Courtesy of M.r. William Knight Zewadski)

MORE WORK IS NEEDED
The Noble Collection Committee, whose members  initially convened in  Mr. Zewadski’s offices at Trenam Law in Tampa,  realized that fundraising required persistent dedication by many people. Lead editorial support by the Tampa Tribune promoted the cause. Donations  came from many individuals, the community, and every member of the Museum staff.  Noble Collection Committee also addressed a host of related issues including the logistics involved in creating an exhibition.

BEHIND THE SCENES 
As one who has been personally involved in over thirty international loan exhibitions over the course of my career, I can only concur with Dr. Murray’s recollections

When the collection arrived at TMA, I was able to help unpack the vases, which was an incredible experience. For an art historian to handle these objects was a gift, although some of the vases, like the very wide, shallow kylix with Herakles and the Nemean lion, seemed so impossibly designed that you wondered at their longevity. (Figure 12)

Figure 12
The kylix, a cup for drinking wine, which, as Dr. Murray recalled, as she unpacked it for the exhibition, was so delicately and fragilely designed that she wondered how it survived the millennia still intact. The shape of this vessel recalls the original appearance of the misfired kylix (Figure 4) that Mr. Noble intentionally collected as one of his potter’s “mistakes.” The view taken depicts the Greek hero Heracles wrestling the Nemean lion, the very first of his legendary Twelve Labors and the one that established the lion skin as his trademark attribute.

(Heracles wrestling the Nemean Lion (ceramic kylix; Attica, Greece; Archaic period, ca. 510-500 bce). Tampa Museum of Art, Joseph Veach Noble Collection, 1986.085)

Dr. Murray then collaborated with Mr. Bob Hellier, the long-serving, very talented Chief Preparator of the Tampa Museum of Art, whose responsibilities included the  handling of objects and physically placing them in exhibition cases. Both were confronted with the challenges of displaying the antiquities. Dr. Murray discussed the matter with Mr. Hellier. She  recommended that the vases be displayed in a way that would maximize their visibility because some  were decorated on both sides whereas others were decorated on both their exteriors and interiors. These then had to be arranged into comprehensible groupings with similar themes and subject matter, such as portrayals of myths, sport, warfare, and daily life. Dr. Murray was also responsible for generating copy for labels and other didactic materials such as wall panels which provided the visitor with valuable information about the exhibition. The accompanying, exhibition catalogue was also on her to-do-list. She observed

The catalogue came out beautifully, a joint effort between Bob Hellier and myself. It contained a complete listing of  JVN’s collection, as well as a selection of focus pieces for which I wrote individual essays (several of these had color plates). 

Visitors to Joseph Veach Noble: Through the Eye of a Collector should also be aware of the fact that the issues which Dr. Murray and Mr. Hellier were obliged to solve were similar to those resolved by  Dr. Branko F. van Oppen de Ruiter, Richard E. Perry Curator of Greek and Roman Art, and staff of the Tampa Museum of Art in their collaborative work on this exhibition.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Over the course of the next three years with a Florida State Legislative fund drive in place, and the continuing efforts of individuals such as Messrs. Frank Harvey, Ben Norbaum, with assistance from Mr. Charles W. (“Jack”) Sahlman and State Senator John Grant, and attractive terms from Barnett Bank, the financial obligation for the acquisition of the Noble collection was discharged, the final payment having been made in late September 1988. 

A NEVER ENDING STORY
Dr. Murray recalls that

when I began teaching my Archaeology of Greece course in the History Department at the University of South Florida, the Noble acquisition provided a fantastic teaching collection, as it did for others. Students were amazed that Tampa had such things.

It subsequently generated the specialized position, the Richard E. Perry Curator of Greek and Roman Art with generous contributions from Costas Lemonopoulos and Dr. and Mrs. Richard E. Perry. This position, which is currently held by Branko F. van Oppen de Ruiter,  is said to be the most heavily endowed curatorship of any museum in the United States. 

The lessons gained from this survey of the life and career of Joseph Veach Noble are simple:  Collectors in partnership with museum curators enable collectors to hone their aesthetic judgements, create unlimited opportunities for scientific research, and open pathways for financial support. Such partnerships often result in arrangements by which those private collections enter the public domain where the objects themselves serve as vectors enabling visitors to expand their cultural horizons with an enhanced understanding of a shared past. Such collector-curator partnerships are invariably win-win scenarios. 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
This article could not have been written if it were  not for the willingness of William Knight Zewadski, a principal mover and shaker of the effort to bring the Noble collection to Tampa, to share unselfishly his vast knowledge, insights, personal experiences, notes, and corporate memory with me.

I also wish to express my indebtedness to Dr. Suzanne Murray for her willingness to share her first-hand experiences with me about her involvement with the events associated with the Noble collection in her capacity as guest curator.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM
For more information about the exhibition, Joseph Veach Noble: Through the Eye of a Collector, on view at the Tampa Museum of Art through February 19, 2026, visit the Museum’s website. The Museum has partnered with the Hillsborough County Public Schools to provide a unique tour experience to students in grades 3-8. In 2024, this program, facilitated by visits, discussions, and art-making projects, will serve nearly 15,000 students from the HCPS Transformation Network.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dr. Robert Steven Bianchi, a critical art historian, is currently chief curator of the Ancient Egyptian Museum Shibuya [Tokyo]. During his career “Dr. Bob” has curated exhibitions of both  ancient and contemporary art in the States, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, and Switzerland. He advises collectors and is also a certified, USPAP-compliant member of the Appraisers Association of America. He has previously written about exhibitions in the Tampa Bay area for Bay Art Files

More is More

EMBELLISH ME: Works from the Collection of Norma Canelas Roth and William Roth

by Dr. Robert Steven Bianchi

One of the most significant imperatives of the exhibition philosophy of the Tampa Museum of Art is to present visually stimulating works of art which are not only possessed of superior aesthetic qualities in their own right but whose subject matter is relevant. That relevance is formulated by asking its visitors to view those works of art within the context of current international discourse about pressing social issues. The permanent exhibition, Identity in the Ancient World, explores such issues as ethnicity, gender, and sexuality as lived experiences resonating with similar issues impacting upon our contemporary society.

Embellish Me: Works from the Collection of Norma Canelas Roth and William Roth is its parallel, temporary loan exhibition, showcasing a panorama of stimulating eye candy reveling in glorious patterns and captivating decorative motifs. But like the themes articulated in the Identity exhibition, Embellish Me engages its visitors in an equally compelling art historical discourse, what is art and who decides what is art.

For about a decade from the mid-1970’s to the mid-1980’s a group of artists on the East and West Coast participated in a movement now known as P&D, the Pattern and Decoration Movement. The participating members, mostly women, understood that artistic discourse was dominated by men who, it seemed, arbitrarily and somewhat disparagingly dumped textiles, basketry, and the like into the pejorative “craft” category, effectively divorcing those creations from the supposedly superior category of “fine art.” That hierarchical categorization had an unfortunate misogynist side effect, because, traditionally, from the dawn of civilization women were the dominant weavers of textiles and baskets. The P&D movement’s imperative, therefore, was to set aside such rigid hierarchies and in so doing, intercalate the contributions of women into the ages-old continuum of visual creations. The movers and shakers of P&D also correctly observed that textiles and baskets were themselves often imbued, as a result of the materials used and the patterns employed, with an intrinsic sensuality effected by their retinal-commanding ornament.

The combined oeuvre of the participants of the P&D Movement offered a viable alternative to what some have termed the general manliness of modernism. It demolished the artificial boundaries traditionally separating fine art from craft. Significantly P&D succeeded in elevating the status of women as artists in their own right. 

Joanna Robotham, the Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at Tampa since 2016, collaborated with Dr. Amy Galpin, former Chief Curator at the Frost Art Museum (now Executive Director and Chief Curator at MOAD in Miami) on Embellish Me. Robotham reinforces the added significance of this exhibition for our Tampa Bay community because, as she rightly stresses, the works of view are from the collection of Norma Canelas Roth (1943-2022), and her husband, William. Mrs. Roth was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, is an alumna of the University of South Florida, and lived most of her life right here in the Sunshine State. Early on she recognized the marginalization of women artists because they were often ignored, and hence neglected, by mainstream gallerists and collectors. 

Figure 1. Installation view of the exhibition Embellish Me at the Tampa Museum of Art.
Photograph by Paige Boscia. Courtesy of the Museum.

The exhibition space is sumptuously designed (Figure 1) with its aubergine-colored accent walls and strategically-placed benches affording visitors various vantage points from which to contemplate the works of art, each one of which occupies its own environment. Every work stands alone and proud, there is no clutter, there is no crowding.

Figure 2. Betty Woodman (1930-2018). Untitled, 1981.

Among the works of art on view are an exuberant vase (Figure 2) potted by ceramist Betty Woodman, one of the mainstays of P&D. The vase is noteworthy for both its size and consummate polychromatic effects. 

Figure 3. Joyce Scott (born 1948). Necklace (Skeletons), 1994.

The necklace (Figure 3) by Joyce Scott, created from glass beads and semi-precious stones, is a deceptive masterpiece in miniature because it deserves more than a passing glance. This work, informed by Scott’s Afro-American heritage, alludes to current social issues by virtue of the initially inconspicuous skeletons which are subtly intercalated into its overall, seeming ornamental design. 

Figure 4. Jane Kaufman (1938-2021). Screen, 1979.

Equally deceptive and likewise worthy of contemplation is the screen (Figure 4) by Jane Kaufman, a leader of P&D. She transformed the skills of embroidery and sewing, taught to her by her Russian-born grandmother, by introducing bugle beads and metallic threads, often glued together, into her compositions. She also foregrounded feathers into her oeuvre, as seen in this exacting, meticulously designed screen in which each pheasant feather appears to be so identical that one’s first impression is that they had been mechanically reproduced rather than being selectively plucked from nature.

Figure 5. Tony Robbin (born 1943). 1978-21, 1978.

Toby Robbin was a member of an improvisational theater group and a member of a men’s consciousness-raising group before joining the P&D. There his oeuvre concentrated on illusion effective by compositions of polyvalent geometric patterns. The repeated patterns of shape and color in 1978-21 (Figure 5) are a tour de force, oscillating as they do between the linear and the painterly, the static and the kinetic. 

Figure 6. Lucas Samaras (1936-2024). Reconstruction #39, 1978.

Lucas Samaras participated in P&D, particularly in the 1970’s when he began his Reconstruction series, of which Reconstruction #39 (Figure 6) is representative. He composes his geometric motifs from swatches of fabric which he combines into compositions with a sewing machine. The resulting works of art purposefully resonate with the aesthetic concerns of the Russian Suprematist Art Movement in which the traditional distinction between foreground and background are blurred.

Embellish Me, therefore, engages not only the visitor’s eye with its dazzling array of decorative, polychromatic ornamentation but challenges the visitor to reassess the place of ornament within one’s own environment. That mental engagement may force one to rethink the attraction that we have either for patterned bed sheets or for wallpaper. And that rethinking should awaken everyone to the role that pattern and ornament have played in the visual culture of virtually every civilization since the beginning of time.

Embellish Me: Works from the Collection of Norma Canelas Roth and William Roth is organized by the Patricia & Philip Frost Art Museum at Florida International University, Miami, and presented in collaboration with the Tampa Museum of Art. The exhibition is on view through July 28, 2024.

Dr. Robert Steven Bianchi, a critical art historian, is currently chief curator of the Ancient Egyptian Museum Shibuya in Tokyo. During his career, he has curated exhibitions of contemporary art in New York City, Antibes, and Tokyo. He has previously written about exhibitions in the Tampa Bay area for Bay Art Files. 

Let’s all go to the movies

Tampa Bay’s microcinema scene

By Keven Renken

For many of us, going to the movies has become an inherent part of our DNA.

Mason City’s 500-seat Art Deco-era theater, The Arlee, opened on S. Main Street in 1936.

I know for me personally, my experiences with attending motion pictures has pretty much gone hand in hand with the evolution of how, and where, we watch them. I may have been four when I first experienced going to a movie theater to see a film. At least this was the first one I could remember. It was the Arlee Theater in my tiny little town of Mason City, Illinois (current population: 2,343), and on its single screen it showed movies on Friday and Saturday nights and Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The run would be extended a second week and sometimes also play on Thursdays if they were showing something more popular. My young self was there with my brother and sisters and mother to see “Babes in Toyland” with Annette Funicello and Tommy Sands, and as I remember it, I screamed like a banshee when the trees surrounded the children in the cast (and no, I’m not getting it mixed up with similar talking trees in “The Wizard of Oz”).

And yet I went back. There was magic and mystery to be had in a space like this – this was decades before Nicole Kidman talked about similar feelings in her ad for AMC – and each iteration of the movie-going experience was more thrilling than the next. Going to a space where there were THREE movie theaters was to experience something beyond bliss – imagine, if you will, waiting in the hallway and hearing the ending of “Close Encounters” and knowing you’re about to see it yourself – so that when something akin to a multiplex opened up, it was well worth the half-hour (or more) drive for the seemingly endless choices of entertainment viewing. And the food! Soon you could get an entire meal, to be consumed at the same time as the viewing!

And assigned seats.

That reclined.

And Dolby.

And IMAX.

And many other viewing choices that made the whole encounter something that audiences actively sought out for amusement as humanity moseyed their way through the 21st century.

Of course, the double whammy of streaming content and the pandemic changed that forever.

At first, people started staying home because they had so much choice there. And then they stayed home because they had no choice. And multiplexes became vast ghost towns, a slightly sad extension of the malls where they were often located.  

It took a hot second, but cinemas are in the process of bouncing back (not all, though – the movie theaters at Citrus Park Town Center, for instance, recently closed). The options for the average moviegoer, in the midst of said bounceback, are varied. You still have your more traditional choices, like AMC, that nonetheless give you seat selection, reclining comfort and a range of snack foods (and even alcohol) that will make your head spin. They also have a membership program that promises a number of amenities, including discounted movie tickets. Then there are your meal-and-a-movie places, such as Cinebistro in Hyde Park. For a slightly higher price, you can buy a (mostly) adults-only experience that involves having an entire meal (and alcohol) delivered to your seat.

And then there is the microcinema experience. 

Over the past three years, a couple of scrappy little additions to the movie-going experience have started making their presence felt in the Tampa/St. Pete landscape of movie-going. And whether their bill of fare is either current indie/foreign films (currently the sole domain of the Tampa Theater) or older cult classics, the microcinema as an alternative to mainstream multiplexes has developed a certain appeal to local moviegoers.

Green Light Cinema, on Second Ave. N. in downtown St. Petersburg, opened in October of 2020. Photo credit: Zachery Howard

Green Light Cinema in St. Petersburg has led the way in this mini-movement. Michael Hazlett, the owner and general manager, started the space at the height of the pandemic (October 2020) because he had recently moved to the area and was somewhat surprised that there was no local alternative to the mainstream movie experience (besides the Tampa Theater, in Tampa, there was nothing on the Pinellas side since the Beach Theater closed years before). Opening in the midst of a world crisis may not have been ideal, but as we have come out the other side of COVID, this intimate space on 2nd Avenue (in St. Petersburg’s bustling downtown) has apparently developed a loyal following. On the night we attended to see the film “Passages” it certainly seemed to have a decent amount of traffic, especially since Hurricane Idalia had just threatened the coast the day before. 

As a matter of fact, almost everything about going to Green Light felt a little bit like going to other cinemas – except that there was both a charming intimacy and an agreeably nostalgic quality about the encounter that almost guaranteed a return visit. It was almost as if I was returning to the Arlee Theater of my youth. One person (Zachery Howard, in charge of operations and marketing for Green Light) sold us both the tickets and concessions before you traversed the visually interesting lobby to sit in the comfy chairs of the 80-seat theater. The space seemed to be populated with folks who understood the “voluntary surrender” (Zachery Howard’s words) involved in going to the theater and all seemed to be there to actually watch the film. The film itself, the latest by the acclaimed independent filmmaker Ira Sachs has been adored by critics (94% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes) and received a certain degree of notoriety online for having some of the most explicit sex scenes in any film in recent years.  There is some issue with a protagonist that is so deeply flawed that one can neither sympathize or empathize with him. However, the focus on queer romance is certainly one that is rarely the subject matter of many films, even in the third decade of the 21st century, and Green Light is to certainly be applauded for giving screening time to one of the few that do.

Screen Door: an Ybor City microcinema, located on the second floor of the historic Kress building on Seventh Avenue, can seat up to 38 film enthusiasts. Interior photo credit: Sean O’Brien/Screen Door

Meanwhile, on the Tampa side of the bay, the microcinema experience has begun to be a thing with the opening last Fall of Screen Door Cinema in Ybor City. Like Green Light, Screen Door has a pretty high-profile location that can certainly promise them a potential built-in audience. Everything else about Screen Door, however, has the feel of a guerilla movie-going adventure. First, unlike Green Light, which curates mostly current films that mostly fall under the category of independent or foreign, Screen Door’s film selection is mostly older films, with a heavy emphasis on what could be considered cult films (though they also showed “Passages” in October and scheduled a screening of the re-release of the Talking Heads documentary “Stop Making Sense”). There is enough similarity in programming, however, that Green Light and Screen Door participate in a joint program called Second Screen Cult Cinema, where the two micro-cinemas take turns screening a film (once a month) followed by a discussion of said film.

And then there is the actual experience of going to Screen Door, which adds to the slightly covert quality of the whole thing. Even though the physical address is on much-traversed Seventh Avenue, there is no actual signage telling you where the cinema is. And you have to be buzzed in. Then you go up a flight of stairs, in a building that is apparently closed for the day. You enter the second floor in a wide open space – and you follow the voices before you actually arrive at where the tickets (and concessions) are sold, and the screening takes place. Once you finally sit down (there is a move afoot to get something with a little more cushion installed), your sense of adventure is already so heightened that you are more than prepared for what the evening has to offer. The space was about two-thirds full (this cinema seats 38) the night I attended, and the film was “How to Blow Up a Pipeline.” Another film that was adored by the critics upon its release earlier this year (also, interestingly, 94% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes), the film has a cast of rather softly-written and fairly unlikeable characters, though it also manages to deftly ask about the role of anarchy in today’s society.

Ann-Eliza Taylor, who along with Warren Cockerham and Sean O’Brien curates the film program for Screen Door (and keeps it running with an army of volunteers), references that there is “almost something religious about being in a space with strangers” when referencing going to the movies. She also saw both Screen Door and Green Light as filling a niche, especially if/when the Tampa Theatre (the granddaddy of film screenings and especially of alternate cinematic choices) leans more towards more live events at their gorgeous historic space. Jill Witecki, Vice President and Director of Marketing at Tampa Theatre, acknowledges that “Over the past few years, touring musicians, comedians, and the number of live shows we present is growing every year.” 

And the theater has a plan for that. 

Coming late next spring. . .

A smaller, more intimate movie theater, affectionately known to the Tampa Theatre staff as T2 (science fiction fans everywhere, rejoice)!

Tampa Theatre, on Franklin Street in downtown Tampa, expects to open their long-anticipated
43-seat second screen theatre sometime in 2024. Photo credit: Jeff Fay / Tampa Theatre

Situated right next to the original historic space, T2, which will seat 43, will serve as an even more “warm and inviting” (Jill again) alternative to the regal grandeur of the 1926 location we have all come to know and love, but with enough of the same DNA that it will still feel like attending the Tampa Theatre to see a film. At a recent member event, President and CEO John Bell introduced the new space and described how both the Tampa Theatre and T2 will give audience members “a sense of occasion and a unique experience.” Jill also explained to me later that having the smaller space will often allow them to book a film for the uninterrupted run that many distributors require by moving the screenings into the smaller space while playing live events in the larger space. While standing in the midst of T2, even as it was being transformed, one already felt, from the brick walls and high ceiling, the thrill that so appealed to the young self all those years ago.

It was thrilling.

And it was exciting.

This going-to-the-movies thing. I can’t get enough of it. How amazing it is that we have these new options for viewing films in front of us.

Let the magic and mystery continue.

Keven Renken is an American author of literary, queer, and genre fiction. His debut novel, “Welcome to the Day,” was published in 2019 and was a finalist for five independent book awards. His sophomore novel, “Graphic: The Novel,” was published by St. Petersburg Press in 2022. His film and theatrical criticism have appeared in Creative Loafing and Creative Pinellas, among other publications. He was the chairman of the theatre department at the Pinellas County Center for the Arts at Gibbs High School and taught there for 30 years. Keven is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Tampa. A native of Illinois, he now lives in Tampa with his husband Bill.

For additional information about each theater and upcoming film features and events, go to their websites. Several offer membership and opportunities, which is a terrific way to support their efforts in keeping the screens bright for years to come.

Green Light Cinema

Tampa Theatre

Screen Door: an ybor city microcinema

For enthusiastic readers of Bay Art File’s previous posts about the Georgia-based self-taught artist Nellie Mae Rowe (1900-1982), please note that ArtHouse3 and Bay Art Files are pleased to be bringing the award-winning dramatized documentary This World is not My Own about her life and work to Green Light Cinema in St. Petersburg, FL, on Thursday, January 18, 2024. There will be a 4 pm and 7 pm screening. Booklyn-based Co-director Petter Ringbom will be available after each screening for an audience Q&A. Advanced tickets may be purchased online. Please join us!

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 23rd through June 4th, 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 17th– to the 19th-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

  1. “Pakistan,” Human Dignity Trust, accessed May 8, 2023, https://www.humandignitytrust.org/country-profile/pakistan/.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Mohammad Gharipour, Persian Gardens and Pavilions: Reflections in History, Poetry, and the Arts (London and New York, I.B. Taurus, 2013), 24.
  6. 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.

Themes for the American Kestrel

An exhibition of works by Ry McCullough

by Tony Wong Palms

Pausing at the entrance, taking in what is in front of me, many things come to mind when walking into Gallery114@HCC at the School of Visual and Performing Arts on the Ybor City campus and encountering the works of Ry McCullough. 

Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view.
Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.

There are three pedestals composed in the middle of the floor, each covered with little objects, some with oddly familiar shapes, like Claes Oldenburg’s monumental sculptures that more or less resemble everyday things, except these are in sizes that can easily fit inside a coat pocket; there’s a video showing the same stuff in a smaller, but ever-changing grouping, the setting like a photographer’s studio; there are framed mixed media works hung on the wall, each depicting a landscape with a scattering of these objects; and finally there’re two small shelves, each with a rectangular box made delicately from Japanese paper, sitting on a greenish felt, like architectural models of some basic structural forms.

Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view.
Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.

The pedestals could be an archipelago, a small group of islands with colored and differently shaped things that washed in from the sea, and the wind blew them around and around to end up where they are now, curios.

And taking a walk on these island shores, kicking around at your feet, these shaped and color things, maybe they are sea shells, or sand smoothed pebbles, perhaps pieces of coral, but most definitely flotsam and jetsam telling tales of their long transformative voyage through the ocean waves, when a glint of something catches your eye and you pick it up, examine it, drop it in your pocket, take it home, place it on a shelf, or window sill, or the end table, alongside all the other odds and ends that have been collected from here and there over the years, and now together they all are, in the same time and space, more or less coexisting, little islands in of themselves.

A friend comes and visits and they might admire your collection, picks one up, studies it, puts it back, but not quite the same spot or orientation; or maybe it’s cleaning day, and the objects are lifted one by one, dusted and put back, and again, not all returned to the exact same position. The arrangement thus shifts slightly, hardly noticeable, and continues shifting one cleaning day after another, one friend’s exploratory hands after another.

This constant picking up and putting back is essentially the 20 minutes long video piece. With the magic of video editing, pieces suddenly pop in and out of existence, creating a slightly different composition with each editing cut. One piece may go poof and reappear in a little while next to something else, or maybe never appear again. The viewer’s brow tense with concentrated anticipation. Did someone just get kidnapped, or is this an example of what physicists call entanglement? Who knew such unassuming objects appearing and disappearing could create such a drama. A suspenseful video performance where the artist is unseen.

The framed works on the wall is non-action action in a flat space. There’s a line, could be a table’s edge or the horizon, plane of the sky meets plane of the earth, but unlike the objects on the pedestals or in the video where they’re visibly grounded, the objects in these mixed media pieces feel suspended, while not as high as the floating bowler hat men in a René Magritte painting, they are not as affected by the gravity that anchors their pedestal counterparts.

Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view.
Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.

Within each frame is a vignette of possibilities. They are very precise and elegant, exuding a calm to the videos’ caprice. Its stillness belies conscious intentions and subtleties of movement, like a person in meditation, where meditation is a deliberate act, as in the long wave of the tsunami, its motion unseen, or unrecognized until it momentously meets the shore.

The exhibition is titled Themes for the American Kestrel. There’s a curious group of objects way up on one of the gallery’s architectural ledges, next to the title wall, with one of the objects resembling a bird, watching all that’s below. This little vignette does not have a title or exhibition label, nor is it acknowledged anywhere else, and being high above eye level, could be easily missed. 

Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view.
Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.

Perhaps the zen like statement from the artist in the exhibition brochure may explain this apparition high on the ledge: “I sit and the bird arrives or the bird sits and I arrive, or not.”, or maybe it’s the meaning of the exhibition title, or both, or neither.

The exhibition brochure, designed like one of the framed wall works, is very handsome, includes a meaningful quote from Virginia Woolf, with the opening phrases: “How much better is silence; the coffee cup, the table. How much better to sit by myself like the solitary sea-bird that opens its wings on the stake….”

Following this is a brief artist statement outlining his ideas and intentions. Towards the end of the statement, McCullough references the artist Giorgio Morandi and his still-life paintings as a counterpoint to the evolving compositions in his video piece.

Ry McCullough, Themes for the American Kestrel, installation view. Image courtesy of Gallery114@HCC Ybor City Campus.

Morandi (1890-1964) lived his whole life in Bologna, Italy, where for the last 40 or so years of his artistic practice he maintained a singular focus on regimented compositions of bottles, vases, and similarly shaped and size objects, painted with subtle hues and tone gradations. It is an ascetic discipline, like a monk repeating a mantra, like Sol LeWitt’s endless iterations of the skeletal cube. The subtlest of details and changes are noticed with potential significance, like when physicists discovering an elemental particle, or that tiny chili pepper altering the flavor makeup of an entire dish.

If Morandi’s 40 years could be compressed into a 20 minutes time-lapse video, the result might be something like McCullough’s own video performance. Of course, a time-lapse video skips over many moments and details. But what is 40 years or 20 minutes, barely a nanosecond within a razor-thin sliver of a rock layer tucked in a stratum of the earth’s crust in the expanse of geologic time.

The exhibition is open to the public by appointment through June 24, 2021. For additional information about the gallery visit the Galleries at HCC website.

Ry McCullough received his MFA in Printmaking and Book Arts from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia. He is an Associate Professor of Art and Design at the University of Tampa in Tampa, FL.

Tony Wong Palms is the Exhibitions Coordinator/Designer at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa, FL.

Setting the Table with Separate Checks

by James Cartwright 

“The main appeal of the name is that it speaks to how an artist collective functions on exhibition night: one shared space with many distinct voices.” – Katelyn Montagna and Adam Mathieu

Separate Checks is an artist collective founded in the summer of 2018 by Katelyn Montagna and Adam Mathieu, who created the group to reconnect with friends and encourage each other to produce new work.  Additional members include McKinna Anderson, Aaron Castillo, Krista Darling, Jonathon Dorofy, Anna Dunwody, Nabil Harb, Andres Ramirez, Erika Schnur, Kristy Summerson, and Jessica Thornton. Many members are University of South Florida alumni who came through the School of Art and Art History’s photography program or the School of Advertising and Mass Communications. It is easy to imagine that assembling the group’s roster had a definite “getting the band back together” feeling.

While the USF connection forms the backbone of Separate Checks, other artists have joined by contacting Adam and Katelyn on social media. Adam amusingly recalls how member Aaron Castillo slid into his DMs on Instagram before meeting with him and Katelyn in person. They describe the encounter as feeling like they were on a blind date with a photographer, but thankfully everyone clicked and the date did not end in awkwardness and disappointment. 

Installation view of Narrative Nowhere exhibition at Gallery221.
Photography credit: Emiliano Settecasi.

The many distinct voices of Separate Checks will be in conversation with each other in Narrative Nowhere, showing at Hillsborough Community College’s Gallery221@HCC Dale Mabry from November 2 – December 10.  Visitors are encouraged to view the show in person, by making an appointment on the Gallery221 website and following guidelines on social distancing.  Originally slated to debut this spring, it is yet another exhibition that was postponed because of the coronavirus. The show’s change in schedule also led to a change in content, as the extended timing allowed artists to respond to their experiences over the past eight months of this turbulent year. 

The initial concept of Narrative Nowhere was to invite other artists to collaborate and reflect on personal histories and the geographic spread of the group, but some members have refocused on addressing Covid-19, racial tension in the United States, and the U.S. Presidential Election. The collective has worked in concert with Gallery221 director Amanda Poss to adjust to these atypical conditions and deliver a show well-suited for this cultural moment.

Andres Ramirez, Muro Falso 1, 2020, panoramic decal.
Photography credit: Emiliano Settecasi.

Andres Ramirez is one member whose work confronts the political, with the artist reacting to the Trump administration’s brutal border policies. His images in Narrative Nowhere are “about facades and what hides behind them; whether they’re digitally invented or not, these images are constructions much like the norms of our society.” This year he has been grappling with the concept of borders and their violently divisive nature, as he questions whether they should even exist. 

Anna Dunwody, Sempiternity I and Dioscorea bulbifera 1-5, 2020, cyanotypes.
Photography credit: Emiliano Settecasi.

Anna Dunwody’s recent works tangle with themes of loss, discovery, and regrowth. Here she displays a series of cyanotypes that she created while in quarantine. She draws connections between the unpredictability of this year and her chosen media, musing that with cyanotypes “you can do everything with such care and intention and each one always comes out a little different and maybe not how you wanted or expected, much like life.” She says that in her work she seeks to find the constantly surprising and occasionally beautiful.

Installation view of Narrative Nowhere exhibition at Gallery221.
Photography credit: Emiliano Settecasi. 

The current exhibition at HCC represents a major sign of growth for the young collective, who previously held one-night-only showings in venues like the Creative Loafing Space and Dojo Sounds recording studio in Ybor. Those events emitted a special “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” energy, where it was exciting to see a show in an unfamiliar space and not already know everyone there. However, Adam is thankful for the opportunity to display work in a fixed space like Gallery221, where the group can reach a wider audience and their works are given ample time and room to breathe. 

  • The Main Course one-night-only show held at the Creative Loafing Space in 2018. Image taken by Anna Dunwody.
  • The members of Separate Checks meeting during simpler times. Image taken by an unnamed family member of the group. Sorry, fam!

Why join an artist collective in the first place? For McKinna Anderson, the group offers her friendship and a sense of accountability, without being restrictive or stifling her voice. Living in Nashville in 2018, she knew Adam and Katelyn from her time as an undergrad at USF and she found herself wandering through a similar post-graduate fog until she joined Separate Checks. She explains that the group has a tethering effect, acting as a lighthouse that always leads her back to the art community. 

Separate Checks logo designed by Jonathon Dorofy

The group’s identity is still in flux, but it adopts several traits from its founders. Adam’s Fine Art background blends with Katelyn’s graphic and advertising skillset to produce something with an art school sensibility and savvy self-promotion. The mixing of elements is persistent among the membership, with both Aaron Castillo and Kristy Summerson moving between the Fine Art and advertising worlds. Member Jonathon Dorofy is also heavily involved with the group’s branding, where he imbues quintessential Florida motifs with a sleek veneer and graceful simplicity. 

In a subtle way, the collective also has a quiet confidence that reflects Adam’s and Katelyn’s personalities, wherein his calm demeanor and her animated enthusiasm form a perfect partnership.  

Separate Checks is currently finding its place in the Tampa Bay art community alongside established collectives like QUAID and the photography-centered Fountain of Pythons. USF photography professor Wendy Babcox is a member of FOP, and Katelyn remembers being intrigued by the group when Babcox mentioned it in class. Babcox’s guidance has had a lasting impact on Adam and Katelyn, and they single her out as an important mentor from their undergraduate days. Additionally, FOP member Selina Roman also serves as a member of Gallery221’s Advisory Council, and she proposed the Narrative Nowhere show to HCC. She was one of the earliest and most ardent supporters of Separate Checks, and she continues to offer her encouragement on its ventures.

What is next on the menu for the young collective? The group plans to eventually host a juried show, and they have kicked around the idea of having their own permanent exhibition space. They are becoming friendly with other artists collectives such as Portland’s Small Talk Collective and are discussing a show exchange and curating each other’s work. For now, they seem content with taking things as they come and not looking too far ahead. 

When it comes to Separate Checks, part of the excitement is in not knowing what comes next. For many viewers, the Narrative Nowhere exhibition is likely their first exposure to the group. This show provides a rare chance to see numerous artists creating work together in the early stages of their careers. These separate voices are coalescing into something new right before our eyes. Don’t blink and miss the moment.   

Narrative Nowhere runs from November 2 to December 10 at Gallery221@HCC Dale Mabry campus. To learn more about the gallery and make an appointment to view the exhibition, follow these links:

https://www.hccfl.edu/campus-life/arts/galleries-hcc/gallery221

https://outlook.office365.com/owa/calendar/Gallery221HCC@hccfl.onmicrosoft.com/bookings/

To learn more about Separate Checks, visit their official website:

https://www.sepchecks.com/

James Cartwright earned his M.A. in Art History from USF in 2017. He focuses on cross-cultural exchanges in art production, while occasionally wandering into the realm of contemporary art criticism. He is an adjunct Art History instructor at USF and the University of Tampa, where he uses his liberal arts background to joyfully corrupt the impressionable youth of America. 

@tampabaebae art files

@tampabaebae art files

by James Cartwright

jenal, 2019. Acrylic, oil, coffee grounds, enamel, on board, foamular frame, 50 x 50 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

Jenal Dolson is a nervous flyer even under normal circumstances. Add scrambling to get out of the country during a global pandemic before international borders close and anyone’s stress levels will ascend to new heights. It is Tuesday, March 31st, and she is leaving the United States and returning home to Canada to shelter with her family as the severity of COVID-19 slowly dawns on U.S. citizens. She sits alone in Tampa International Airport, waiting to board a flight that she never expected to be on and saying goodbye to a place she is not ready to leave behind. 

To call the last few weeks of Dolson’s time in Tampa a whirlwind would be an understatement. At this point in March, she is a MFA candidate at the University of South Florida, in the thick of her final semester when the coronavirus hits America. Between transitioning her in-person classes to an online platform (no easy feat for studio art courses), finishing her thesis work, writing about said work, preparing for install, and making travel arrangements, change is the constant. Her graduating class’s MFA exhibition Battin’ A Hundred is canceled, their reception is canceled, their panel discussion moderated by artist Kalup Linzy is canceled. It feels like everything is canceled. However, the artists are undeterred, and they still exhibit their work in the USF Contemporary Art Museum. There is almost a defiant pride in displaying their art knowing that it will not be seen in person.

Dolson spends her precious final hours in Tampa packing for her flight and installing her work in the CAM, with the invaluable assistance of museum staff Vincent Kral, Eric Jonas, and Tony Wong Palms. She recalls visiting the museum for the first time on a 2014 trip to Tampa and sensing then that she would one day show work in this space, a premonition fulfilled these six years later.

Bump Dream, 2020. Acrylic, latex, oil on canvas, 72 x 72 inches.
From the MFA thesis exhibition. Image taken by Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez.
Soother, 2020. Acrylic, oil, fabric, foamular, on MDF, 50 x 50 inches.
From the MFA thesis exhibition. Image taken by Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez. 
Whale, 2020. Acrylic, oil, foamular, on panel, 50 x 50 inches.
From the MFA thesis exhibition. Image taken by Jezabeth Roca Gonzalez.

Her arrival in Toronto is not met with a warm embrace from Dolson’s parents, who are relieved to see their daughter home safe but still respecting the social distancing rules that now measure our lives. Everyone dons their face masks and Dolson sits in her parents’ backseat on the car ride from the Toronto airport to their family home outside of Cambridge, Ontario, taking these moments to let a wave of quiet calm wash over her and finally exhale. She is deeply grateful to her parents for hosting her, knowing that in doing so they have committed to the country’s mandatory 14 day returning traveler quarantine alongside her. 

Dolson uses the next few days to reacclimate to these surroundings, the familiarity of place comforting her during an unfamiliar time. She self-isolates in a section of her family’s basement, with her beloved chihuahua Bam Bam to keep her company and a mini-fridge stocked with snacks to keep her fed, courtesy of mom. That Friday she joins a Zoom reception hosted by CAM for the MFA exhibition, which has a great turnout as many people are eager to see the artists’ work and congratulate them. Dolson later passes the two-week quarantine mark on the same day that she passes her thesis defense, and her reward for this tremendous accomplishment is finally being able to hug her parents. 

Into the Belly, 2020. Coloured pencil, watercolour pencil, gesso, on board, 8.75 x 8.75 x 0.6 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

A welcome focus for Dolson’s energy comes in the form of creating a solo exhibition entitled Into the Belly for Tempus Projects, highlighted on the non-profit gallery’s Instagram account. The show, which ran from May 30th-June 12th, neatly aligns with the Tampa-based gallery’s approach to the pandemic’s unique challenges. Tempus is utilizing social media to showcase a series of mini-virtual exhibits that feature works on a small, intimate scale. As Tempus Founder and Programming Director Tracy Midulla explains, “We have taken the approach of offering small, short virtual exhibitions. This allows us to keep the quality of the work featured at a high standard, but the format and delivery of the works to a manageable level for everyone as we are distanced from one another.”

Installation view of Into the Belly in a section of Dolson’s converted basement space. Image courtesy of the artist.

Into the Belly consists of eight coloured pencil drawings on gessoed board, with each work’s dimensions around 5×6 or 7×8 inches. Dolson’s process is reliant on found materials, so she seamlessly adapts to her new circumstances by repurposing leftovers in her old studio in her parents’ house. Her use of coloured pencils on board allows for textures to come out of the surface itself, some areas pulling through the grain of the wood or underlaying brushwork; paired with a uniform attention to colour blocking and gradient fades. These underlaying patterns resemble countless tiny fissures, which further emphasize the material’s surface while adding layers of complexity to already rich compositions.

The Days Eye (Edelweiss), 2020. Coloured pencil, watercolour pencil, gesso, on board, 8.75 x 4.8 x 0.6 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

The small scale of each work is in keeping with the gallery’s current theme of miniature exhibitions. Dolson also expresses her interest in scaling down the works to a size that is accessible, where they can be held in your hand and you can take them with you very easily. Although these new images are much smaller than her thesis paintings, she draws several parallels between the two bodies of work. Dolson clarifies that the viewer is still looking at a series of shapes, forms, lines, directions, and pathways, which you can follow around the work finding little areas where something new can be seen.

Bathhouse, 2020. Coloured pencil, watercolour pencil, gesso, on board, 5.8 x 4.8 x 0.75 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

There is plenty to see in Dolson’s drawings, so much that you might get lost in looking. The artist presents the viewer with a plethora of shapes and motifs to latch onto and alluring pathways through each labyrinth. One might glance at a piece like Bathhouse and seize upon the chain in the lower right of the composition as a good entry point. If you follow this chain directly upwards, it becomes veiled by a light blue rectangular shape that hints of cloth or drapery. If you choose a different approach and start from top to bottom, does the chain then become unveiled? Other areas may suggest something recognizable while leaving you grasping to articulate this familiarity.

Into the Belly is an apt title, as Dolson equates our current COVID-19 reality with entering the belly of the whale or belly of the beast. As levels of infection fluctuate worldwide and we find ourselves months into isolation with no clear end in sight, she muses “it is hard to say if we are on the other side yet, are we still inside of it completely, or can we see the light? There is a lot of emotion in this time that is kind of unpredictable and everyone’s pace of life has changed dramatically. It is not only a metaphor, but it is allegorical of how everyone has been forced into this journey.”

The title also attaches us to the body, to be within a living thing, which she connects to the physical referents that a lot of the shapes and forms take on in her work. The tempest of emotions and anxieties we feel manifest physically in our bodies, and the pandemic makes us hypersensitive to these sensations. We continually self-monitor for the first signs of fever, the slightest cough, and to make sure we have not lost our sense of smell or taste. As Dolson succinctly puts it, “our emotions in our bodies are really in our guts.”

Insulation (viewfinder), 2020. Coloured pencil, watercolour pencil, gesso, on board, 5.8 x 4.8 x 0.6 inches. Image courtesy of the artist.

Dolson is appreciative of Tempus for giving her a platform to explore new ideas post thesis, amidst the pandemic. She explains that the timing was especially beneficial, as it “really gave me a lot of purpose during the first month and a half that I was back. I was able to come home and put in work drawing 8-10 hours a day and that was absolutely amazing. I think Tempus has a strong sense of what it means to be an art space in that they truly value their artists and look to foster a sense of creativity and programming that makes sense for who they are affiliated with.” 

Proceeds from Dolson’s show will go towards helping Tempus fundraise for a paid full-time director position for the gallery. Dolson is also donating a portion of the proceeds from future sales to Black Lives Matter Tampa.

What is next for Jenal Dolson? “Making more work” is her immediate, unflinching answer. Dolson is making a new series of paintings on canvas and she looks forward to waking up each morning and having her studio time. She relishes the daily grind of making work, embodying that true artist-as-hustler mentality, where the balancing act of juggling multiple jobs and projects only energizes her to seek more.

In terms of future exhibitions, Dolson is thrilled to have a solo show this fall at an artist-run space in Benson, Nebraska called The Pet Shop, and she beams when discussing the opportunity. Her close friend Kim Darling, currently a MFA candidate at USF, ran a space at the gallery and helped Dolson make connections in Benson. Dolson also remains in good virtual company through regular studio visits with friends and a gallery in Chicago with which she is enamored. Finally, it has been only days since Dolson moved into an apartment in the port city of Hamilton, Ontario. The industrious city’s “steel town” identity matches her own tenacious work ethic. She is drawn to the city’s strong local arts scene, where she can make her marks on the community. There is also a lovely blend of nature and rich architectural history that she is wasting no time in exploring. Dolson is eager to create her place in this new environment, and everywhere she looks she absorbs new lines, new shapes, new textures, new patterns, and new objects, searching for another source of inspiration around every corner.

Dolson in her Tampa studio with Bam Bam. Image taken by Kim Darling.

Into the Belly ran from May 30-June 12 and it can still be viewed on the Tempus Projects Instagram account. For more information about Jenal Dolson, you can visit her website and Instagram account. You can also learn more about the 2020 MFA exhibition on the USF Contemporary Art Museum website. 

James Cartwright earned his M.A. in Art History from USF in 2017. He focuses on cross-cultural exchanges in art production, while occasionally wandering into the realm of contemporary art criticism. He is an adjunct Art History instructor at USF and the University of Tampa, where he uses his liberal arts background to corrupt the impressionable youth of America. 

A Mindful Mural

When this article was written, the Public Art Committee and I were full of enthusiasm and anticipation. Months of meetings, preparation, and planning were beginning to culminate in the realization of a new mural and in a series of community-driven programs that would accompany the mural’s unveiling. Students and volunteers from the community were gathered to assist with the fabrication. However, with the arrival of COVID-19 in March, it was no longer safe for communities to gather the way we were used to, and many plans were suspended. 
Despite all of this, creativity continued on. Cecilia Lueza safely worked alone to complete a vibrant mural, titled Exuberance, which exudes an uplifting message of well-being that feels all the more necessary in the midst of a pandemic. Once it is safe to gather together once again, we still plan on hosting events to celebrate the completion of Exuberance and to raise awareness of health and wellness resources for our community–and I, for one, am looking forward to that day!
Amanda Poss, Gallery Director, Gallery221@HCC Dale Mabry Campus

The 2019/2020 Grounds4Art@HCC
Health & Wellness Mural 

by Jeffrey Rubinstein

Students, faculty, staff, and visitors to Hillsborough Community College’s Dale Mabry campus must be noticing a much higher presence of art, murals, and especially, student involvement in the college’s public art projects. Recently, HCC has also increased its footprint for health, wellness, and food security programs. With the ever-growing awareness of the connection between food security and academic performance, members of the HCC Public Arts Committee, Feeding Tampa Bay, Bay Art Files, and The City of Tampa Arts and Cultural Affairs joined forces and began meeting last year to design and create a large, visually engaging mural on the exterior of the Social Sciences building of the busy, urban Dale Mabry Campus in Tampa. The mural will be a permanent reminder that each of us must proactively sustain our well-being through health and wellness.

Under the direction of Gallery Director Amanda Poss, Gallery 221@HCC received a grant from the Arts Council of Hillsborough County for the 2019-2020 mural project. The project was conceived by the Grounds4Art@HCC initiative, HCC’s public art program, formed in 2018. Two other community-centric exterior mural projects have been completed to date, with more in the works as additional funding and sponsorships become available.

The first Grounds4Art@HCC Mural was created by Florida-based artist Michael Parker in collaboration with HCC students during the spring of 2019. Visible from the main courtyard of the campus, the 67-foot-long mural titled Infinite Transitions is located on the ground floor of the Learning Resources Center (DLRC) and is directly below Gallery221.

Egyptian artist Aya Tarek’s large-scale mural was the second public art project to be completed on the HCC Dale Mabry Campus. Tarek, a prolific artist who has created murals in Cairo, Berlin, São Paolo, and Portland, worked on campus with HCC students and community members to fabricate the mural. Titled Painting Ourselves Visible, the mural project and related programming sought to celebrate and increase the visibility of Arab, Middle Eastern/North African (MENA) and Muslim communities in the Tampa area. Organized in conjunction with the community organization Art2Action, this project was made possible with the support of the Gobioff Foundation Treasure Tampa Grant and can be seen on the west side of the Humanities building (DHUM).

Poss explains and gives us insight into the process for such a large project involving so many various local entities: “Our newest Grounds4Art@HCC mural is envisioned as a creative placemaking project that sheds light on the theme of health and wellness. The mural will provide vibrancy and color to the heart of campus while at the same time highlighting the Social Sciences building as the home of our campus’ newly established food pantry.  It will be a large canvas for the artist to work on–over 65 feet in length spanning the upper section near the building’s southwest entrance.“

Artist Cecilia Lueza at work on one of her numerous public art projects located throughout Florida and the southeastern United States.
In early 2020, artist Cecilia Lueza participated in a comprehensive and interactive discussion about health and wellness with HCC Dale Mabry Campus students, faculty, staff, the campus Public Arts Committee, and members of the Tampa Bay community.

The focus of this exciting project is health and wellness, will culminate in a dynamic and visually engaging mural by Cecilia Lueza, an Argentinian-American artist-based in Tampa Bay. The mural will be the final step in a long process that involves HCC students from its inception. In early 2020 on the HCC Dale Mabry Campus, the public arts committee, the artist, staff, faculty, students, and members of the Tampa Bay community engaged in a comprehensive and interactive discussion that allowed the artist to hear directly from students about how they think about health and wellness, and how this can be interpreted visually. The artist will ultimately, create the mural, but the image is based on feedback suggested by HCC students. Lueza described the feedback she received, “The majority of the students suggested the mural should inspire, connect, beautify, stimulate thought, have a sense of motion, and be geometric, bright, energetic, lively and represent mental health in a positive way.” Lueza presented three design options on February 14th and voting commenced until the 17th.

Based on the winning design, the mural will be an impressive composition of a fit and healthy young person, possibly a student, her head and eyes skyward, all in a palette of vibrant tones, at the prow of a flowing wave of energy that she creates. The image is provocative enough to allow viewers to contemplate the mural’s themes. Health and wellness are more than what we eat or how often we go to the gym. It is a mindset and lifestyle that includes our thoughts and attitude toward life and the energy we create and leave behind us.

Poss expands: “The majority of the mural’s fabrication took place in March and April and we are planning a free public unveiling party and related programming to occur in the Fall of 2020. Everyone who would like to participate in will be encouraged to attend, whether they are a part of the HCC community or a member of the Tampa Bay area community at large.”

Artist Cecilia Lueza high above the ground in a cherry picker during the Spring 2020 installation phase of Exuberance, the newest addition to HHC’s public art program on the Dale Mabry campus. Located on the exterior of the Social Sciences building, the mural takes its inspiration from issues related to food insecurity, mental and emotional health, and social and cultural inclusion.

To be officially dedicated and unveiled in the Fall of 2020, the mural Exhuberance will be on permanent display on the HCC Dale Mabry Campus in Tampa and will be a visual reminder to the entire community that health and wellness are part of a journey to be embraced that includes more than exercise and nutrition but exposure to the arts, as well.

About the author

Professor Jeffrey Rubinstein is the English Discipline Chair and the college-wide Tenure Committee Chair at Hillsborough Community College in Florida. Based on the Dale Mabry Campus in Tampa, he is a founding member of Grounds4Art@HCC.

About the artist

Argentine American artist and sculptor Cecilia Lueza, studied visual arts at the University of La Plata in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Today, she is well known for creating vibrant public art pieces in a range of mixed media. Since 2000 she has been working on a variety of public art projects in many cities throughout the United States. Her work has been exhibited at Art Miami, Arteamericas, and Scope Miami Beach, and in the last year she completed public art pieces in Washington DC, Jacksonville FL, West Palm Beach, and St Petersburg FL among others.

Additional reading

Maggie Duffy, Bright Spot and Art Reporter
Tampa Bay Times
April 28, 2020

What’s it like to paint a mural in isolation? This Tampa artist shares her experience Cecilia Lueza socially distanced on a lift for the project at Hillsborough Community College.

FloodZone – Much is amiss in this paradoxical paradise

By Selina Román

I have a couple versions of a recurring dream. In one, a car I am driving careens off the road into some unknown body of water – sometimes clear, sometimes murky. Sitting in the driver’s seat I become a spectator as water seeps into the car and it slowly sinks away from the world above. In the other version, I’m driving down an old Florida backroad surrounded by swamp. As I turn a corner, the road disappears beneath water that has breached its banks. I recall in this dream that I felt scared but mostly hopeless. In all of my drowning/sinking dreams, I wake up never knowing if I made it or not.

That sinking feeling rushed back as I took in the large-scale photographs in the exhibition FloodZone, by Miami-based artist Anastasia Samoylova on view in the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum. The lush images, full of color and water, are akin to walking through a waking dream where the surroundings are familiar but something always feels amiss.  Her photographs, just like the intrusive water she depicts, seep into the psyche and linger.

As Samoylova pointed out in a recent artist talk, nowhere in the images will the viewer see the catastrophic. Those fraught scenes are relegated to the news. In her photographs, it’s flooded streets after a typical rainstorm, swollen waterways, construction sites, and mysterious figures navigating a landscape in limbo. However, the most telling images are the ones of details – ones that most people overlook. In these, nature fights back and it just may be winning. 

Courtesy USF Contemporary Art Museum; photo by Don Fuller.

I lived in Miami for nearly six years in the late 2000s. Cranes punctuated the skyline for projects with names like Quantum, Paramount, Epic and Infinity – names that embodied the human need to go higher, achieve more, get more. I see this quest again in Samoylova’s images of architectural renderings – computer-generated images showing happy couples sharing a romantic moment poolside or the luxe interior of a living room. But look a little longer, past the promise to the reality and see the abandoned construction site, detritus spilling over the sign like weeds. In what seems to be a nod to the developers’ slick signage, these stand-alone images occupy the gallery floor confronting viewers in their own space. It’s here in the intersection of reality and façade, of man versus nature, that Samoylova’s photographs become a poignant harbinger. 

Just like the signs for the construction projects, Miami puts on a good face for tourists, especially those that don’t have to leave the beach save for going to and from the airport. I learned this when I was living in Little Haiti in 2005. I had just moved to Miami and was welcomed that year by hurricanes Dennis, Katrina and Wilma. That year, the Atlantic was the hottest on record and spawned more than a dozen named storms. While Dennis and Katrina caused damage and power outages in South Florida, Wilma delivered a staggering blow to an already storm-fatigued area. My roommate and I rode out the storm as winds howled. From my apartment window, I watched an electrical transformer explode, in awe of the green flashes of light. 

Little Haiti was without power for four weeks, while just across the railroad tracks that line Dixie Highway, lights flickered back on and air conditioners were humming in a matter of days. A coworker bemoaned that she was without power for about 45 minutes – she lived in an area of the beach, near hotels, where the power lines were buried. That year of storms awakened me to the social implications of climate change. 

Installation view; photo by Selina Roman.

As a Miami Beach resident, Samoylova sees beyond that touristy façade. Some of her most successful images are those of the details that only someone living there would notice. On the side of a concrete overpass pylon, a green plant fights its way out of a crevice while brilliant violet mold flourishes beneath it. Severe lines and geometry dominate the visual plane but the plant and mold triumphantly stand out from the stark environment. It’s repulsive and beautiful in the same breath.  In one of her few black and white photographs, a small, proud plant grows near the roof of a building, its roots clinging to the surface like veins and capillaries. Air plants are common in Miami, but there’s something different about this one: the plant’s roots have been painted the same white as the building.  In these moments, I find myself hopeful and terrified as nature asserts herself.

Samoylova does not shake her finger at you. She’s not passing judgment. If anything, she collectively takes our heads and turns them, telling us to look closely at these pieces of a puzzle she’s assembled. As singles, they are strong images but together, they become this dull pang in the pit of my stomach – the knowledge of what’s at stake. 

In one particular photograph, fourteen eggs occupy a nest tucked between concrete and steel adjacent to an unidentifiable body of water. The carefully composed image of the nest and water is a perfect inverse of each. But this ying-yang, however perfectly arranged in the frame, belies the precarious balance of the natural world against the man-made. The eggs appear protected, but from above they are not. Will they hatch? Or maybe the larger question is will they survive once they hatch? Will we make it? It’s this false sense of security that plagues South Florida. 

When looking at her work, I am struck and reminded of Robert Frank’s The Americans. In the 1950s the Swiss-born Frank traversed the country making documentary photos of post-war America. With a keen outsider’s perspective, Frank’s images revealed not a prosperous super power, but a country marred by racism, poverty and injustice. Samoylova, born and raised in Russia and living in Miami since 2016, also has that eye for detail and incongruity. Just like Frank’s, her images show us that there is more to learn if we just look a little longer and a little harder.

In an homage to Miami’s color, Samoylova designed the eye-catching presentation of the exhibition that underscores the thin line we Floridians tread. Angled swathes of bright colors on the wall – sky blue, canary yellow, magenta – serve as a backdrop for the works. The colors are painted on a diagonal and border a deep gray. Standing in the gallery, the sloped lines create a sense of uneasiness and symbolically represent the downhill direction in which we find ourselves. Yet look again and those same lines could be the uptick of hope.

Courtesy USF Contemporary Art Museum; photo by Don Fuller.

From the Everglades to South Beach, humans have invaded this place, not only altering the landscape but upsetting its delicate ecological balance. Her compositions show the constant battle between man and nature. The brilliance of so many of the images is they’re composed in a way in which it’s difficult to determine who is dominating who. In an image of Miami’s famed Vizcaya mansion, water covers the intricate inlaid marble floor of its elaborate latticed gazebo with Biscayne Bay ominously visible through its arches. The horizon all but disappears under the overcast day, and the bay and the floor are one in the same. The breach is not catastrophic in the moment the photograph was made, but the potential for disaster is made clear.

Several years ago, I sat in Miami’s Legion Park which overlooks Biscayne Bay. The breeze rustled the palms, which stood majestically and stoically against the sparkling blue water. It was nothing special in particular – just Miami on a good day. I snapped a photo, but it’s what I wrote under the image later that still haunts me: “I belong here.” But now I’m not so sure any of us do.

Just the other night that recurring water dream came rushing back. This time I was visiting friends in their beachside condo. As I walked to the balcony, I could see the waves of the rising ocean swirling outside. When I looked down, however, I realized there was no beach below and that the ocean was lapping at the building not far from where I stood. That hopeless feeling also resurfaced. I woke up and my thoughts volleyed to Samoylova who offers us a slice of hope wrapped up in a wake-up call – a black and white photograph of her son, standing in ankle-deep water, surveying flooding in a parking garage. Will we let him and his generation inherit this flooded world?

This quiet, yet powerful and important show reminds us that Florida’s future is at stake as climate change and continued unchecked development wreck havoc. I am also reminded of what sadly could become Miami’s unofficial theme song, “Dear Miami” by Irish singer Róisín Murphy: “With a little style fool ‘em for a while, but you can’t turn back time,” she sings. “Dear Miami, You’re the first to go, disappearing under melting snow…”

Selina Román is a Tampa-based artist and photography professor. She received her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of South Florida.  

FloodZone is on view at the USF Contemporary Art Museum on the campus of the University of South Florida in Tampa through March 7th. The exhibit was curated by Sarah Howard, organized by USFCAM, and supported in part by an Oolite Arts grant, a grant from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and Dr. Allen Root. 

Sponge Exchange, in the adjacent Lee and Victor Leavengood Gallery presents artist Hope Ginsburg’s new collaboratively-produced video and sculpture installations reflecting on historic sponge diving and contemporary coral restoration and inspired by explorations of climate crisis impact on coastal ecosystems. The exhibition, also on view through March 7th, was curated by Sarah Howard, organized by USFCAM, and supported by a National Endowment for the Arts Art Works grant, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Dr. Allen Root, and the USFCAM ACE Fund. 

Related event:
Gallery Talk with Anastasia Samoylova and Ksenia Nouril, Ph.D. Thursday, February 13, 6 pm, USF Contemporary Art Museum (CAM)

Art Thursday’s gallery talk and reception with artist Anastasia Samoylova and Ksenia Nouril, Ph.D., Jensen Bryan Curator, The Print Center, will contextualize Samoylova’s work within the historical and contemporary role of photography in society. Light refreshments will be served. Free and open to the public.

An Interview with Christian Viveros-Fauné

Image courtesy of Christian Viveros-Fauné

“My engagement with art has something to do with [its] mystery, a continuous exploration of how it is put together.” Christian Viveros-Fauné

Christian Viveros-Fauné is an internationally respected independent art critic and curator. His appointment as Curator-at-Large to the University of South Florida’s Contemporary Art Museum (USFCAM) in August of 2018 launched a series of politically and socially engaged exhibitions that have further linked Tampa Bay to current trends in the global art world.  

Interview conducted and transcribed by Amanda Poss in May of 2019.

Amanda Poss: I was reading your new book Social Forms: A Short History of Political Art, and in the introduction you cite a trip to the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. when you were twelve where you saw four Rothko paintings. You said this experience was something that “energized” you, and that the paintings “lodged themselves deep into [your] memory.” With this as your catalyst into art appreciation as a child, would you also describe your initial steps into the art world as a professional?

Christian Viveros-Fauné: Those were my initial steps as recounted in the introduction, which reads in part as a portrait of the critic as a young man. At some point I figured out that there was this thing that was mysterious to me–and that actually remains mysterious to me, simply because I can’t make [art], I can’t do it. You know there are people who can’t dance and you say “they have two left feet,” well, I can’t draw, I can’t paint, I can’t do either because I have two left hands so to speak, so I write. My engagement with art has something to do with [its] mystery; it’s a continuous exploration of how art is materially put together, how pigment is pushed around cloth, for instance, to make a picture. That has always seemed to be, to me, kind of miraculous. 

I had another experience in my early twenties, when I went to live in Europe. I was always a writer, or a writer wannabe…(laughs)…this was definitely during the writer wannabe period… and I figured out that hanging out with artists was a lot more interesting than hanging out with writers. Writers tend to be shut-ins, they spend a lot of time alone. Being a professional writer is a lonely experience, whereas artists have to get out into the world and show their work at least once or twice a year, so art making has always been far more public. Writers, on the other hand, could spend two years, five years, ten years, basically working on the same project…. So, like I said, I found that artists were a lot more interesting to hang out with. Eventually I entered an artist studio, an actual professional artist, someone who got paid for making paintings and exhibiting them, and I remember being floored by the idea that people could push pigment around to make meaning in ways parallel to how I wanted to make meaning with words. That was a real revelation, it has stayed with me, and is a gift that keeps on giving. I find myself continually inspired, surprised, and amazed by individuals who have made a life from making this kind of meaning consistently.

Bosco Sodi, Muro, 2017-2019. USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch.
Bosco Sodi, Muro, 2017-2019. USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch.

AP: That brings me nicely to my next point: you have a tremendous CV, with a wide array of experiences and accolades. As someone who has done quite a lot of independent writing and curating, what sort of opportunities/possibilities excite you most about working within USFCAM, which is an institutional but also academic setting?

CVF: That’s a really good question. I’ve long had a career as a writer who moonlights as a curator… meaning, I arrive at an institution and put together a show, but I rarely get to do a second exhibition at the same institution. And that independence comes with significant freedoms, but it also has some drawbacks, right? Not only is working independently unsteady work, but being at an institution longer than single exhibition can mean that you make a bigger impact than just one good show…

AP: One moment, as opposed to a successive series of them.

CVF: Exactly! And that’s really the sort of thing that attracted me to the idea of working at USFCAM. Margaret Miller is largely at fault-slash-deserves the credit for bringing me here. The way she proposed the position was very liberating. For me, ultimately, it was largely about being able to do something at an institution that offered significant freedoms conceptually and curatorially, but that also allows for the opportunity to be able to do a series of exhibitions, with the added bonus that the university is the enveloping organization That is, USFCAM operates in an environment geared towards education, rather than making museum trustees happy.

AP: Which is really different.

CVF: Yes, very different! So, yeah, I think it’s turned out to be a really good fit. There’s also the value of doing things on this campus and in Tampa as opposed to in New York. New York is arguably the center of the art world, it has long been the center of money in the art world. A lot of important art is seen in cities like London and New York, and that is obviously significant on its face… [but] there a lot of cultural phenomena that fail to register in New York because there’s not enough money attached to them, and that’s very unfortunate. Ideas that run contrary to the art market tend to do better elsewhere, they tend to take root in places other than New York. In my book I talk about groundbreaking artists like Rick Lowe. He has given plenty of talks in New York but he has never had a show there, he has never participated in the Whitney Biennial, which is insane, seeing as he’s one of the most influential artists living today. Same thing with Theaster Gates. Social practice in general, which is more than a decade old, has gotten very little play in New York and I think that tells you a lot.

Jorge Tacla, Señal de abandono 34 (Homs), 2018.
USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch.

AP: That brings me to my next point. In an interview you did back in 2016 with Brett Wallace for Conversation Project NYC, you were asked: “What should a great show seek to accomplish?” In your response, you mentioned that art should “illustrate [critically] where art/culture is today,” and that you see this happening more in secondary and tertiary cities around the world, as opposed to New York. Do you still feel that way (it sounds like you do), and do you feel that Tampa could be one of these cities?

CVF: I hope so! Let me answer the second part of your question first: I sincerely hope so, and I know my colleagues at USFCAM hope so. We have made inroads and will continue to make inroads in that direction. I’m not sure Tampa has become a secondary or tertiary cultural hub yet, but I do see green shoots suggesting, given a number of crucial synergies, that such a thing could happen. What I like about Tampa currently is that it presents an environment in which ideas can be profiled anew and redefined, which I personally find to be very appealing. 

Miki Kratsman, Displaced (2010) and Bedouin Archive (2015-2016).
USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo by Will Lytch.

AP: Now let’s talk about something a bit broader. What does it mean to you to be a curator?

CVF: I don’t really subscribe to the idea of a curator as an author. That is, I don’t like the situation where the curator supplants the artist as an author. I like to think of the role of the curator as a chief collaborator, someone who helps articulate, who helps put discrete works together, like in a group exhibition. Or, if we’re talking about mounting a solo exhibition, [the curator] helps create the context for the work. Curatorial work is, in part, a function of getting art out of the studio. Many artists work long hours with the doors closed to the outside world. Then the work comes out for exhibitions. In a gallery situation, the dealer, the gallerist, hopefully helps the artist articulate his or her vision. In a museum, it’s the curator who helps in making the symbolic meaning circulate. In those circumstances, the curator functions like an an interlocutor–a chief believer in the work–whom the artist can also talk to and figure out the best cultural angle in which to position his or her art. 

(Laughs) That was kind of a wordy and non-specific definition….

AP: That’s perfectly fine! I was curious what it meant to you (specifically), because anyone could cite sort of a textbook definition or current theories but everyone has their own approach.

CVF: Possibly because I am very much a generalist as a writer and curator, I really do think there’s an important aspect of editing and interpreting in curating. At their best, curators act like editors for artists. That’s not to say that the curator is necessarily cutting anything from an artist’s production, but, to continue with the editing metaphor, if you’re putting together a collection of ‘essays’–that is, a collection of artworks–then it’s on the editor/curator to make sure that those artworks play as well together as they possibly can. Whether the ‘editor’ is working with a single artist or a group of artists, it’s his or her obligation to establish a relationship of trust and collaboration wherein the best work comes forward and is represented in the best light possible.

Miki Kratsman, People I Met, 2010–2018 (installation view), USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch.
Miki Kratsman, People I Met, 2010–2018 (installation view).
USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch.

AP: Now I want to go back to something more specific: since you’ve come to Tampa, you started with curating Miki Craftsman: People I met (August – December 2018) and then The Visible Turn: Contemporary Artists Confront Political Invisibility (January – March 2019). What sort of overall trajectory or goal are you setting for yourself as Curator-at-Large at USFCAM?

CVF: Let’s see. Both of those exhibitions you just mentioned can be described, in broad strokes, as highly political, to nod definitively towards issues of social engagement. But what we have on tap for the future, well, some exhibitions are more political than others. Work with a social or political bent has always been my interest, but I don’t want to present those kind of shows exclusively. I think that would make for far too uniform an exhibition program, both for the museum and myself as a curator, so there are other things on tap, [which] I’d rather not discuss right this minute… (Laughs)

AP: No hints? (Laughs)

CVF: I don’t necessarily want to give away the the shows that are coming in 2020 or 2021, but what I can tell you is that it will involve an eclectic group of exhibitions. There are going to be several that are a lot more about eye candy [as opposed to] the two shows I’ve done to-date, and even the exhibitions that are heavy on the eye candy will have a significant social component to them. I can say [something] about the next exhibition, which is called The Return of the Real. It’s a two-person show that riffs, or cheekily appropriates, the title from Hal Foster’s The Return of the Real. We’re definitely not using the title in a way that he’d like. (Laughs)

[The exhibition includes] the work of Robert Lazzarini, he makes amazing sculptures that are distorted anamorphically, and another artist who is a generation younger, Rodrigo Valenzuela. Rodrigo is a faculty member at UCLA, [and] a photographer… he’s had about five shows in West Coast museums in the last three years, so he’s well-known out there but not so much on the East Coast. We’re interested in bringing in him [to Tampa] and in being the first institution on the East Coast to showcase his work. Both of these artists are differently committed to amazing acts of re-representation. In both cases, their artworks involve visually stunning, conceptually complex work. 

Tavares Strachan, 130,000 Years, 2018. USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch.

AP: Let’s talk more about your book, Social Forms: A Short History of Political Art. What were you looking for when selecting 50 exemplar works of political art from last 200 years?

CVF: To be honest with you, and I say this every time I present the book, the selection is pseudo-authoritative and very subjective. I write in the introduction to the book that the volume contains 50 essays on what I consider to be the 50 greatest works of political art. Those 50 artworks will invariably be different from another critic’s 50 great works. We might overlap on 10 or 20 artworks, or at least I would hope so. 

What these artworks have in common is that they’re all important in the sense that they have all transformed the notion of what people think about when they think about political art. They’ve all put down a marker, they’ve all expanded the definition of both art and politics. Some of these artworks have done so closer to their date of creation, others have not. I start with [Francisco] Goya’s Disasters of War, which was published posthumously, 35 years after his death. He was way too smart to publish those prints in his lifetime because he would have been nailed to the wall by the Spanish monarchy, and if not by the monarchy, then by the Inquisition. But he still made them… and it took more than a decade to put the plates together. So, you have to ask yourself: why would an artist of his stature, late in life, labor so long to put together those 82 plates? [Goya] is basically taking it all in, he’s considering the war, the state of things, the application of reason to human events, weighing how humans respond to social and economic pressure, and ultimately, what happens to society when things fall apart. And what he witnessed is in those prints. I mean, he wasn’t sitting there taking photographs of the war… but somehow or other, through his own observations and other people’s accounts, Goya arrived at the first modern visual record of war and its human cost: what the poet Robert Burns referred to as ”man’s inhumanity to man.”

AP: Some would say even that all art is political, and you address that question in your introduction, but of course you also had to narrow it down to 50 artworks for the book. What do you wish you could have added in?

CVF: I wish I could have added in another fifty artworks. The initial idea was that the book would include a hundred works of political art. I was told by my publisher that they loved the idea of the book, but that we had to slim it down because reproduction rights are just too expensive… (Laughs) Even the reproduction rights on this little book are crazy, so a hundred wasn’t happening, but, yeah, I wish there were specific works that I could have gotten in there, some of them by contemporary artists whom I admire very much… 

David Zwirner Books, Published in 2018

For example, I wanted to include a major work by the Bruce High Quality Foundation. The group ran a free University, BHQFU, for a whole decade. The collective hasn’t disappeared but it has sort of gone underground. That university was very important. It’s only been a year since it was closed, but it was amazing as a social experiment. The Bruces helped shape an entire generation of artists in what is otherwise a very jaded city. There are many others artworks–contemporary, modern, precursors to the modern–that I would have loved to include and simply could not. Richard Mosse, for example: I would have loved to have included images from his Heat Maps series, which are recent photographs that document the refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East using a military-grade infrared camera that is so sophisticated, it is actually considered a weapon of war.

AP: So what excites or intrigues you most about art right now?

CVF: Its possibilities. The fact that [art], today and in every age, actually gets to reimagine what’s possible. I think that’s really what always amazes me [most] about art. It’s got nothing to do with the actual politics of it, whether I might agree with them or not. It has everything to do with the power of the artist to make something amazing from somebody else’s idea of garbage, to turn the seemingly useless into something that has a renewed purpose…. I mean, that basic gesture is just revolutionary, it’s super radical. I find that kind of surprise, that kind of retooling, to be something that only art can do. There’s something special about art’s lack of use value, its seeming uselessness. At its best and most ambitious that uselessness harbors the potential to create laboratory-like insight… the fact that artists can reimagine worlds is immensely powerful.

Karolina Sobecka, A memory, an ideal, a proposition, 2017.
USF Contemporary Art Museum. Photo: Will Lytch.

AP: One last question. Can art change the world?

CVF: I think that it can, in small and big ways… it’s not [literally] liberty leading the people, and likely never will be, but art does provide, like [the painting] Liberty Leading the People [by Eugène Delacroix], a rallying point for ideas, and we are a very image driven species. Art can change the world, it has done so in the past–I can count at least 50 instances in which it has–and will continue to do so in the future. 

The Return of the Real: Robert Lazzarini and Rodrigo Valenzuela
opens at the USF Contemporary Art Museum in Tampa on August 26th and runs through December 7, 2019. The exhibition is curated by Christian Viveros-Fauné, and organized by the USF Contemporary Art Museum.

Artist’s Conversation and Exhibition Reception
Friday, September 6, 6-9 pm
Conversation in the galleries with artists Robert Lazzarini and Robert Valenzuela, and USFCAM Curator-at-lare Christian Viveros-Fauné.
The exhibit reception follows from 7-9pm.
Free and open to the public.

For additional information about a symposium, curator’s talk, spoken word and open mic events, and concerts in the gallery throughout the run of the exhibit, visit the USF Contemporary Art Museum’s website.

Amanda Poss received her MA in Art History from the University of South Florida in 2015 specializing in Modern and Contemporary Art, and a BA from the University of Saint Francis, Fort Wayne, Indiana in 2011. Poss currently holds the position of Gallery Director at Gallery221@Hillsborough Community College, Dale Mabry campus, where she also oversees a growing permanent art collection. She is the former Gallery Director at Blake High School, where she organized and curated exhibits from 2015–2017. Poss also has also held positions at the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery at the University of Tampa as a Gallery Assistant, Adjunct Professor at the University of Tampa, and Adjunct Professor at Hillsborough Community College.