Two new exhibits at Baylor University’s Martin Museum of Art aim to give their viewers new ways to look at art and the world, but in different ways.
In Pursuit of the Light focuses on nine women photographers with works in the museum’s permanent collection, while the biennial exhibition by the Baylor Art Museum and Faculty of Art History highlights their efforts in media ranging from painting, drawing and photography to ceramics, fabrics and textiles and large steel sculptures.
Museum director Alison Chu and collections manager Michael Schutz curated “In Pursuit of the Light” from the museum’s holdings, bolstered by recent acquisitions from The Museum Project, which gave more than 6,000 photographs to art museums in America and Europe over a 10-year period. years.
The nine photographers selected for “In Pursuit of Light” share a common gender, and their works explore the different roles women play in art, including as subject, object and creator, Chu said.
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Most are living and many still working photographers, with the exception of Imogen Cunningham, a contemporary and collaborator of photographer Ansel Adams, who died in 1976. “All of these women were titans in the field,” said education coordinator Eliza Crowder, who produced accompanying audio walk through the exhibition.
The show samples a variety of techniques and approaches, such as Sheila Pinkel’s images of camera lenses captured by a flatbed scanner and xeroradiographs produced by X-rays, and Dornit Doherty’s “Cumulus,” which layers white flowers over clouds.
Others show their distinctiveness in their choice of subjects and themes. Suda House’s colorful photographs interpret strong women from world mythologies, such as Lilith, Sedna, Juno Lucina, and Kali Ma, some of which include plastic trash found in the ocean, a nod to House’s experience as an outdoor swimmer and her identity as an eco-feminist. Kenda North’s “Red Shoes” provokes contemplation on the roles of women with underwater views of women in white ruffles and red shoes. Lorna Simpson’s “Untitled (Oblique Story About Absence)” juxtaposes a photo of piano pedals with a pair of empty high heels.
To change viewers’ perspectives in a show that offers different viewpoints, museum officials installed four pillars in the middle of the gallery to display framed photos away from the walls they normally hang on, Schütz said. “(The photographs) are pulled away from the wall to give them a different type of presence … it activates the center of the space,” he explained.
The descriptive labels accompanying each piece are observational rather than scientific this time around, in an effort to encourage viewer interaction with the pieces on display, Chu added.
Martin’s second ongoing exhibition, the museum’s biennial display of Baylor art faculty works, brings new perspectives through the number of collaborators, 13 studio art faculty members and four art historians.
As such, he samples contemporary art in their creations and research, creating a large-scale show that includes Winter Rusiloski’s abstract canvases that stretch four and five feet long, and Robbie Barber’s large steel baby carriages inspired by mobiles homes from the 1940s and 1950s, which are set outside on the grounds of the Hooper-Shafer Center for the Fine Arts.
The media in the show are equally wide-ranging, including Tina Linville’s free-standing textile sculptures complete with hanging pom-poms; Andrew McIntyre’s seemingly perforated ceramic plates; and H. Jennings Sheffield’s photographic commentary on Tangier Island in Virginia shrinking due to sea level rise.
