The University of Arizona Museum of Art Exhibits a Celebration of Life on the Arizona/Sonora Border

Written by Chuck Westinghouse Tuesday, 06 December 2011 22:13

Tucson, Arizona.- The University of Arizona Museum of Art is pleased to present "The Border Project: Soundscapes, Landscapes & Lifescapes" on view at the museum through March 11th 2012. In honor of Arizona’s Statehood Centennial Celebration (1912 – 2012) The Border Project presents sound art, music, performance, painting, sculpture, installation, video, film, and photography that examine historical and contemporary life in the U.S./Mexico borderlands region. Unique in its range of focus, the exhibition treats Arizona, USA and Sonora, Mexico as partners with shared histories, dreams and political realities. It celebrates the rich cultural heritage of this region from Spanish colonization, to Mexican independence, to the Gadsden Purchase, through today. Building on these legacies, The Border Project acknowledges the complexities of border communities that encompass narratives of Mexicans, Mexican-Americans, Asian Americans, American Indians, and Europeans.

The exhibition includes historical objects from Arizona State Museum and the Arizona Historical Society; rare photographs from the Center for Creative Photography; a compilation of film clips about the region dating back to 1929; and sound art, visual art and installations created just for this exhibition. Thirty artists are contributing work to the exhibition. A full schedule of public programming is also associated with the exhibition, including artists’ panels discussions, storytelling events, live music performances, film presentations and an international symposium on December 2 & 3.  All events are open to the general public. The Border exhibition reflects the expertise of scholars from a broad range of humanities disciplines.  It was co-curated by Lauren Rabb, Curator of the University of Arizona Museum of Art, John-Michael Warner, PhD student in Art History at the UA School of Art, Janet Sturman, professor of ethnomusicology at the UA School of Music, and Jennifer Jenkins, film scholar and professor of English at the University of Arizona.


The University of Arizona Museum of Art (UAMA) is on the edge of the University of Arizona  campus near the southeast corner of Park and Speedway.  The Museum faces into the campus and is not visible from the crossroads. UAMA is accredited by the American Association of Museums (AAM), an honor bestowed on less than 5% of the museums in the US. The University of Arizona Museum of Art houses wide-ranging collections of over 5,000 paintings, sculptures, prints and drawings, with an emphasis on European and American fine art from the Renaissance to the present. Special holdings within the Museum's collections include: The Samuel H. Kress collection, given in the early 1950s, consists of more than 60 European paintings, sculptures and decorative objects dating from the 14th through the 19th centuries. A highlight of the collection is the 26 panel Retablo of the Cathedral of the Ciudad Rodrigo by 15th century Spanish painters Fernando Gallego and Maestro Bartolomé (and their workshops), which is not only the most important altarpiece produced by the Spanish masters, but is also perhaps the finest example of late Gothic Spanish painting in a U.S. collection. In addition the Kress holdings include paintings by Vittore Carpaccio, Jusepe de Ribera, Domenico Tintoretto, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Horace Vernet and Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun.


The C. Leonard Pfeiffer collection, donated in 1944 by a UA alumnus, is comprised of nearly 100 American paintings and drawings from the early 20th century. The collection includes works by John Sloan, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Isabel Bishop, Jacob Lawrence, Reginald Marsh, John Steuart Curry, and Philip Evergood. The Edward J. Gallagher, Jr. Memorial collection features more than 200 European and American paintings, sculptures and works on paper from the late 19th and 20th centuries. The sculpture holdings, considered one of the finest in the Southwest, include pieces by Auguste Rodin, Jean Arp, Aristide Maillol, Alexander Archipenko, Jacques Lipchitz, David Smith, Isamu Noguchi, Henry Moore, and Alexander Calder. The collection is particularly strong in Abstract Expressionism, with important paintings by Morris Louis, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell. Other artists represented include Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Joán Miró, Fernand Léger, Marc Chagall, Emil Nolde, and Kurt Schwitters. The Jacques and Yulla Lipchitz collection: Sketches and Models, donated by the artist's widow in 1980, includes 60 plaster and clay models by Lipchitz, various tools from the artist's studio, numerous portrait busts, and several fully-realized sculptures. With its intensive focus on the work of a single artist and its chronological range, spanning 1911 to 1971, this comprehensive collection provides rare access to the working process of one of the most important sculptors of the Modern era. The Robert McCall collection and the Archive of Visual Arts are our newest collecting initiatives. The Edward J. Gallagher, Jr. Memorial bequest, an endowment which funds the selective growth of the permanent collection, has made possible since 1980 the acquisition of more than 1,000 works of art, including pieces by Honoré Daumier, James McNeill Whistler, José Posada, Käthe Kollwitz, Frank Stella, Richard Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, Elizabeth Catlett, and Robert Colescott. The majority of the Gallagher Bequest acquisitions have augmented the Museum's substantial print collection, which has extensive WPA/FAP holdings in addition to significant representation by Old Masters such as Albrecht Dürer, Hendrik Goltzius, Jacques Callot, Rembrandt van Rijn, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Francisco de Goya, William Blake, John Martin, and Eugène Delacroix. Visit the museum's website at ... http://artmuseum.arizona.edu

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