At MoFA: Land Ho!
Broken Ground: New Directions in Land Art| February 17 – March 26, 2017
As a destination for guest curatorial projects, MoFA provides several calendar opportunities each season. The Museum is currently partnering with Jeff Beekman from the Department of Art, to host his exhibition “Broken Ground: New Directions in Land Art.” In the initial week of the exhibition, Jeff supervised two installations from Eloise Guanlao and Postcommodity Collective, which can be viewed below. He also hosted a pre-opening lecture by Postcommodity artists Kade L. Twist and Cristóbal Martínez, and opened the exhibition officially on Friday night. On the following Monday, Jeff brought visiting artists Bill Gilbert and Erika Osborne to host an artists talk, “Being There: Interdisciplinary Models for Place-based Creative and Critical Arts Pedagogy.”
The next event Jeff oversaw was the screening of Lucy Raven’s “China Town,” an animated still video, on February 28. MoFA staff would like to acknowledge the enthusiasm and dedication of Professor Beekman and welcome visitors to his colorful, environmentally-involved exhibition that runs through March 26, 2017.
Interpretive programming is under way for “Broken Ground” and MoFA’s other exhibitions. Prof. David Kirby requested a “Land Ho!” encounter on behalf of his English Literature class (hence the title above). Post-visit, Dr. Kirby wrote that “with three shows that are so varied, my students got a sense of how, as different as art works are, they have in common an attention to detail and a desire to communicate a profound sense of what it means to be human in this world.” Education Curator Viki D. Thompson Wylder has met many university classes for tours of the exhibitions, but also Leon County students, senior-residence tour groups, community artists’ meetings, and special needs participants. On February 25, Dr. Wylder’s “Family Day” premiered a video of the artworks of K-12 students who studied the artists in “Broken Ground” in order to respond thematically with their own thoughtful creativity.
MoFA staff are pleased to announce special events for exhibitions running concurrently: “Honest Visions: Artists and Autism” will present a performance / reception evening on March 23 from 5:30 to 7:30. There will be an afternoon presentation on Sunday, March 26 for “Cinema Judaica: The War Years 1939-1949” by Ms Darcie Fohrman, who designed the award-winning “Daniel’s Story” for the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC. Ms Fohrman will present a talk on her experiences in the Museum profession from 2:30-3:30 on Sunday March 26, the closing day of the exhibition. Please join us!
