Akron Art Museum Presents Serial Intent, Family, and Please Touch

Andy Warhol, Electric Chair, 1971, screenprint on paper, 35 1/2 x 47 7/8 in. Collection of the Akron Art Museum. Gift of Peter M. Brant

Serial Intent
Karl and Bertl Arnstein Galleries
June 3 – September 10, 2017

Artists sometimes create works of art that are meant to be viewed as isolated, individual masterpieces. They also make artwork with Serial Intent. As we experience the world in motion and over time, so too do serial artworks ask to be viewed one after another. While they stand alone as works of art, individuals within a series also consciously relate to one another. Together they express an additional meaning or concept that is not apparent in any single component. Serial Intent presents groupings from several series held in the Akron Art Museum collection, including serial prints, drawings, and photographs.

Key series on display include Pop variations on common and repeated imagery in Andy Warhol’s Electric Chair (1971) screenprints in ten color variations and Robert Indiana’s graphic Numbers (1968). Michael Loderstedt and Craig Lucas’ collaborative screenprints Bestiary (2000) represent the components of one of our most common serial tools—the alphabet—with lush color and engaging imagery. The Legend of John Brown (1978) by Jacob Lawrence and others will address storytelling and narrative within a serial format. Photographs from Cleveland-based Lori Kella’s Seven Summits series offer simulated views of the highest mountain on each continent, crafted by the artist in paper. Series of images can function as a collection, as in Karl Blossfeldt’s precise photographic arrangements of botanical species, Nature’s Garden of Wonders (1932). Lorna Simpson’s Wigs (portfolio) similarly presents various hairstyles, pinned to the wall like scientific specimens along with text, opening conversations about broader implications of hairstyles and self-presentation.

Also featured in Serial Intent will be serial works by Vito Acconci, Jennifer Bartlett, Bruce Checefsky, Sol LeWitt, Deborah Luster, Judith K. McMillan, Richard Misrach, Nam June Paik, Robert Rauschenberg and Ralph Steiner. The exhibition offers opportunities to experience these multi-part artworks within the serial contexts intended by the artists who created them.

LaToya Ruby Frazier, Momme, From The Notion of Family, 2008, gelatin silver print, Courtesy of Joan and Carl Schneider

Family

Fred and Laura Ruth Bidwell Gallery

Through August 20, 2017

Photographs in Family record a variety of intimate, spontaneous, prescribed and strained interactions that distinguish the families we inherit, create and adopt. The artists featured in the exhibition have wide-ranging relationships with their subjects.

A key part of LaToya Ruby Frazier’s body of work are collaboratively executed portraits of her family. Born in Braddock, Pennsylvania, Frazier is renowned for photographs addressing the social and economic shifts her hometown has undergone following its industrial decline. Her work bridges personal and broader social issues, confronting poverty, racism, healthcare inequality and environmental toxicity, in part by depicting her family in photographs that are both intimate and reflective of the hardships faced by the larger community.

Keenly aware of the ways in which documentary photography has historically neglected the viewpoints and voices of its often disenfranchised subjects, Frazier makes her images in a way that gives creative agency to the individuals depicted. In the incisive image Momme, Frazier juxtaposes her face and her mother’s, offering a nuanced portrayal of both their individual characteristics and the bonds they share.

Family includes the work of Carrie Mae Weems, Joseph Vitone, Walker Evans, TR Ericsson, Mary Ellen Mark, and Harry Callahan, among others.

Family is organized by the Akron Art Museum and supported by funding from the Ohio Arts Council.

Erin Guido and John Paul Costello, It’s going to be, 2017, mixed media. Courtesy of the artists. Photography by Joe Levack/Studio Akron

Please Touch

The Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation Gallery

Through July 16, 2017
Whether you’re a child on your first visit to the museum or an experienced art aficionado, the lure to run your hand across an amazingly smooth-looking sculpture or experience the texture of a thick impasto brush stroke never really goes away. Sometimes art creates that urge to touch and gather more information, but we respect the museum rules, knowing that touching can damage artworks, and we lean in for a closer look. The exhibition Please Touch gives viewers the opportunity to move outside the traditional museum experience by engaging their sense of touch. For Please Touch, the Akron Art Museum commissioned artists Jay Croft, Jordan Elise Perme and Christopher Lees (a.k.a. Horrible Adorables), and Erin Guido and John Paul Costello to create new artworks that speak to audiences of all ages in this uncommon way. Inspired by childhood games, puzzles and lift-the-flap books, each artist created a touchable work that visitors can manipulate as they make meaning of it in their own way.

Please Touch is organized by the Akron Art Museum and supported by a generous gift from The Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation.

Akron Art Museum

One South High Street

Akron, Ohio 44308

Akronartmuseum.org

330.376.9185

Exhibitions on view

Continuing

Please Touch | Through July 16, 2017

The Mary S. and David C. Corbin Foundation Gallery

Gross Anatomies | Through July 30, 2017

Judith Bear Isroff Gallery