Project 19: Abdelali Dahrouch
August 30 – October 12

Abdelali Dahrouch’s work eloquently addresses our complex sociopolitical climate—particularly in relation to the U.S. and the Middle East—through the lens of video and installation art. He will present Desert Sin, Revisited, which consists of a video installation initially created in response to the Gulf War. Given the urgency of the current situation in the Middle East, he has “revisited” these powerful and haunting images. More...

Taking Flight:
Japanese Paintings Of Birds And Flowers From The Sanso Collection
August 30 - October 12

Drawn from one of the pre-eminent private collections of Japanese paintings in the United States, this exhibition explores the ways in which Japanese artists have used birds to symbolize Buddhist ideas and samurai ideals, as well as humorous depictions of avian antics. Hunting hawks, wild geese, frisky wagtails and graceful swallows are shown soaring, swooping, and searching for food in paintings that range from finely detailed to boldly brushed and reflect a broad spectrum of Japanese painting traditions. Guest curator Bruce Coats, Professor of Art History at Scripps College, has selected 27 scrolls dating from the 14th to the 19th centuries. A complementary exhibition entitled “Dragons, Beasts, & Butterflies” will be on view simultaneously at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College.

Distinctly American:
The Photography Of Wright Morris
October 25 - December 21
Opening reception: Friday, October 24, 5-7 p.m.
Special Lecture: Friday October 24, 4 p.m., Rose Hills Theatre
"When All Else Fades: The Photographs of Wright Morris"
Richard H. Axsom, Senior Curator of Prints and Photographs at the Grand Rapids Art Museum, Michigan

Wright Morris (1910-1998), who attended Pomona College in the 1930s and taught here in 1988, was an award-winning author as well as a gifted photographer. The 76 gelatin-silver prints in the exhibition date from 1938 to 1947 and depict the rural life of a Nebraska "dirt farm" near Morris's childhood home. Focusing on architecture and domestic interiors, the meticulously composed images-of buildings, rooms, straight-backed chairs, the disparate contents of drawers-offer an intricate portrait of rural life on America's Great Plains. The exhibition, drawn from the collection of the Capital Group, was organized by Stanford University's Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Center for the Visual Arts.
 

Love And Joy About Letters:
The Work Of Ben Shahn And Mirella Bentivoglio
August 30 - December 21

Symposium September 20 at Lyman Hall:
3:30 p.m. Frances Pohl, Welcome and Introductory Remarks
3:45 p.m. Matthew Baigell, “Shahn’s Love and Joy About Jewish Letters”
4:30 p.m. Mirella Bentivoglio A Conversation with Frances Pohl
5-7 p.m. Reception

Organized by Professor Frances Pohl, this exhibition highlights a select group of works by two artists whose work focuses on the expressive and poetic qualities of text and letters. Mirella Bentivoglio was a key figure in the Concrete Poetry movement in Italy in the 1960s; its adherents typically used text as the sole formal component of their work. Bentivoglio’s early training as a poet is evident in the subtle ways she manipulates text in order to convey both visual and intellectual complexity. The well-known American artist Ben Shahn (1899-1969), on the other hand, used text most often in conjunction with other images to enhance the message or mood. His early training was as a commercial artist, where the correlation between text and image was a constant concern. Shan designed his own particular font, called the “folk alphabet,” that appears in many of his prints and paintings. He also designed a Hebrew alphabet, which was incorporated into his “chop” (a small stamp traditionally used by Japanese artists to mark their work), which he created in the 1960s. The title of the exhibition comes from a book Shahn published in 1964 entitled Love and Joy About Letters.



Project 20: Pauline Stella Sanchez
October 25 – December 21

Opening reception: Saturday, October 25 4 - 6 p.m.

Pauline Stella Sanchez weaves together the fields of art, design, physics, and history in a complex body of work that encompasses digital drawings and prints, sculpture, and video. Centered around mythologies of the sun and ranging from the Rococo to the Post-Modern, Sanchez’s amalgamations of found objects, cartoon color, and computer-generated images suggest a mysterious epic blending fact and fiction, the rational and the imaginative. More...