MIT Reports to the President 1995-96

LIST VISUAL ARTS CENTER

The List Visual Arts Center's (LVAC) mission is to present, through changing exhibitions as well as the publicly sited Permanent Collection, the highest quality, most challenging art and design by professionals practicing in diverse media today and to provide additional educational programs which promote a broader appreciation of the ideas within contemporary visual expression.

The Center's Advisory Board, chaired again by Kitty Glantz, met three times, and welcomed new member David Wallace from the School of Engineering. The Board urged the staff to continue to connect itself more tightly with MIT and to expand educational outreach to the entire greater Boston community. The Board strongly recommended keeping LVAC galleries open on Friday evenings and encouraging student groups to use the spaces, as appropriate, for their social or programmatic activities.

HIGHLIGHTS OF THE YEAR

EXHIBITIONS

Muntadas: Between the Frames: The Forum.(Hayden Gallery, October 7 - December 10, 1995). A provocative video installation by the Spanish-born artist which offered a collective portrait of the people and institutions which come between the artist and the audience: dealers, collectors, galleries, museums, docents, critics, and the media. (48-page catalog published, together with interview transcription brochure.)

Next of Kin: Looking at the Great Apes (Reference Gallery, October 7 - December 10, 1995). Work by six contemporary US artists (Walton Ford, Daisy Youngblood, Sean Landers, Richard Ross, James Balog and Jean Lowe) who examine the charged and often contradictory relationships between humans and the great apes. (48-page catalog published)

Glenn Ligon: Skin Tight (Bakalar Gallery, October 7 -December 10, 1995). An investigation of boxing as an arena of conflicted black masculinity, through a series of punching bags bearing images and texts by fighters and rap singers, together with an editioned series of works on paper relating to Muhammed Ali. Two punching bags were hung publicly, in the Humanities Library and in a tree outside the East Campus Houses.

Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art (Hayden and Reference Galleries, January 13 - March 24, 1996). Work wrestling with cultural identity by 20 foreign-born artists representing China, India, Japan, Korea, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam who emigrated after 1965. Exhibition organized by Asia Society, New York.

Kim Yasuda: Unquiet (Bakalar Gallery, January 13 - March 24, 1996). An installation commissioned by the LVAC by this west coast artist of mixed Asian descent, which investigated identity through images, text, sound, film, video, and light projection.

Face To Face: Recent Abstract Painting (Hayden, Reference and Bakalar Galleries, April 13 - June 30, 1996). An investigation of the variety of strategies employed to keep abstraction, 20th century art's most radical invention, fresh and fertile. The ten artists were: April Hankins, David Ortins, and Jo Ann Rothschild (MA); Sandy Walker and Fandra Chang (CA); and Shirley Kaneda, Fabian Marcaccio, Dona Nelson, Byron Kim and Prudencio Irazabal (NYC). (32-page catalog published.)

EDUCATION PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS

COLLECTIONS

Through MIT's One Percent for Art policy, a geometric tile floor piece by Jackie Ferrara was installed in the Tang Center for Management Education. A Ferrara wood sculpture was purchased and installed in Rotch Library. Twenty-four works were added by gift, including three sculptures by Jacques Lipchitz, a painting by Sandy Walker and prints by Leon Golub, Nancy Spero and Elizabeth Murray. Fifteen additional works were acquired by purchase; Major conservation initiatives involved repainting the Calder and Tony Smith sculptures.

HONORS AND AWARDS

STAFF NEWS

Ron Platt, Assistant Curator, resigned after nearly seven years to become Curator at the Southeast Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC.

Katy Kline, Director, received the Kepes Award from the Council for the Arts. She served on the Challenge and Advancement panel at the National Endowment for the Arts the Mid-Atlantic Regional Fellowships Panel, and as an accreditation reviewer for the American Association of Museums.

Katy Kline

MIT Reports to the President 1995-96