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The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art Celebrates 80 Year Anniversary with New Exhibitions and Installations

EUGENE, Ore. -- (April 16, 2013) – The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon is about to turn eighty years old and will celebrate with multiple exhibitions, special loans, and the release its first online exhibition catalog. A free, public reception on Friday, May 31, from 6 to 8 p.m., begins a series of exciting exhibitions and programs.

 

“In honor of our eightieth anniversary,” says executive director Jill Hartz, “we’re honoring the community that has supported and appreciated this museum for eight decades. With its continued engagement, we look forward to another eighty years of providing high quality exhibitions and stimulating public programs that embrace our community’s interests and priorities.”

 

Hartz notes that “Living Legacies: The JSMA @ 80” celebrates the collectors and collections in our community that reflect the museum’s mission and vision for the future. Five years ago, the museum celebrated its seventy-fifth birthday with the special exhibition “Lasting Legacies,” which highlighted major works in the collection and the donors that had made them – and the museum – possible. 

 

Planned as a companion exhibition, “Living Legacies” looks to the future.   Even with more than 100 pieces of art on view in the Barker Gallery, from more than sixty collectors, “Living Legacies” just touches on the diversity of work present in our region.  In addition to the Barker exhibition, the museum invites visitors to look for “JSMA @ 80” labels throughout the galleries, which identify works acquired by the museum in the past five years, reflecting a more expansive collecting practice.

 

On view June 1 – September 1, 2013, “Living Legacies” will also be available on the museum’s website through the JSMA’s first online exhibition catalog. The exhibition is made possible by the Coeta and Donald Barker Special Exhibitions Endowment and JSMA members.

 

In celebration of the museum’s 80th, the Schnitzer Gallery will feature “New American Acquisitions,” works acquired, through gift and purchase, over the last five years.. These include exciting works from the Americas and the Caribbean—including Central and South America and Cuba.  The exhibition celebrates the museum’s commitment to building our already strong collection of work by Pacific Northwest artists and our more recent interest in collecting hemispherically.

 

The Focus Gallery features the West Coast premiere of “Light Journey: An Odyssey in Paint,” a retrospective exhibition of the art of Korean-born artist Su Kwak. The show brings together 31 pieces of work that affirm the artist’s distinctive use of light and color to capture her spiritual life. Her sculptural canvases visually equate the light that gives definition to objects with an inner light that gives purpose and meaning.  Organized by the Brauer Museum of Art at Valparaiso University and curated by Dr. Jungsil Lee, “Light Journey” is on view May 28-July 28, 2013.

 

A selection of Japanese art acquisitions from the Wadsworth Collection, a recent gift of more than 150 contemporary Japanese prints, is on display in the Preble/Murphy Gallery. Also on view as part of “Living Legacies” are a series of woodblock prints, on loan from collector Lee Michels, featuring firemen.

 

As a permanent marker of the JSMA’s 80th anniversary, the museum invites the public to help it acquire “Order (The Red Guards),” a provocative work from the 2011 exhibition “Xiaoze Xie: Amplified Moments (1993-2008),” on view in the Soreng Gallery.  Xiaoze Xie is one of China’s most prominent contemporary artists and is currently the Paul L. and Phyllis Wattis Professor of Art at Stanford University.

 

Beginning June 15, the Artist Project Space features “Celebrating Oregon Artists,” a display of works created since the 1980s that represent the museum’s commitment to exhibiting works by living artists from our state and community. Featured are works in a range of media by noted Oregon artists Rick Bartow, Michael Brophy, Tom Cramer, Mel Katz, Whitney Nye, Lucinda Parker, Dan Powell, Jim Riswold, and Gary Tepfer. “Celebrating Oregon Artists” will be on view until September 15, 2013.

 

About the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

The University of Oregon's Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is a premier Pacific Northwest museum for exhibitions and collections of historic and contemporary art based in a major university setting. The mission of the museum is to enhance the University of Oregon’s academic mission and to further the appreciation and enjoyment of the visual arts for the general public.  The JSMA features significant collections galleries devoted to art from China, Japan, Korea, America, Europe and elsewhere as well as changing special exhibition galleries.  The JSMA is one of six museums in the state of Oregon—and the only university museum--accredited by the American Alliance of Museums.

 

The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art is located on the University of Oregon campus at 1430 Johnson Lane. Museum hours are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesdays, and 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays and Thursdays through Sundays. Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for senior citizens. Free admission is given to ages 18 and under, JSMA members, college students with ID, and University of Oregon faculty, staff and students. For information, contact the JSMA, 541-346-3027.

 

About the University of Oregon

The University of Oregon is among the 108 institutions chosen from 4,633 U.S. universities for top-tier designation of "Very High Research Activity" in the 2010 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO also is one of two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities.

 

Contact: Debbie Williamson Smith, 541-346-0942, debbiews@uoregon.edu

 

Links: Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, http://jsma.uoregon.edu