Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole
Director of the Smithsonian National Museum
of African Art

my love affair with art

dr. johnnetta cole

Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole was appointed the Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art (NMAfA) in March, 2009. Founded as a small museum on Capitol Hill in 1964, NMAfA became a part of the Smithsonian Institution in 1979, and in 1987 it moved to its current location on the National Mall. The museum's collection of over 10,000 objects represents nearly every area of the continent of Africa and contains a variety of media and art forms. NMAfA also has an extensive education program. Since the mid-1980's, Dr. Cole has worked with a number of Smithsonian programs. She currently serves on the Scholarly Advisory Board for the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture, the construction of which will be completed on the National Mall by 2015.

Before assuming her current position, Johnnetta Cole had a long and distinguished career as an educator and humanitarian. Through her work as a college president, university professor and through her published works, speeches and community service she has consistently addressed the issues most important to her; creating racial and gender parity and redressing all other forms of inequality.

Dr. Cole served as president of Spelman College and Bennett College for Women. She is the only person to have served as president of these two historically Black colleges for women in the United States. She is also Professor Emerita of Emory University from which she retired as Presidential Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, Women's Studies and African American Studies. Johnnetta Cole has been awarded 55 honorary degrees and she is the recipient of numerous awards, including the TransAfrica Forum Global Public Service Award, the Radcliffe Medal, the Eleanor Roosevelt Val-Kill Medal, the 2001 Alexis de Tocqueville Award for Community Service from United Way of America, The Joseph Prize for Human Rights presented by the Anti-Defamation League, The Uncommon Height Award from the National Council of Negro Women, The John W. Gardner leadership Award from The Independent Sector, the Lenore and George W. Romney Citizen Volunteer Award from the Points of Light Foundation, Ebony magazines most influential 100 in 2010, George Washington Carver award 2011, Benjamin Franklin Creativity Laureate Award and Washingtonian Magazine's 100 most powerful women 2011.

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Friday, March 23, 2012
4:30 pm
Lowe Art Museum
Located at the Wesley Foundation
1301 Stanford Drive
Coral Gables

Anne Leighton Massoni
Image from the Holding series

borrowed people | constructed places

Borrowed People | Constructed Places explores the creation of identity through the use of appropriated familial and found imagery. Anne Leighton Massoni, Libby Rowe and Kris Sanford each create new stories from found photographs, taking something discarded and nearly lost and creating story anew. Rooted in photographic processes, their work takes form in both 2D and 3D pieces.

With the Holding series, Anne Leighton Massoniutilizes created images and found photographs to present a place between truth and fiction. These contrasting images sit side by side with a thin line painted across their surface, drawing imagined connections. The artist combines photographs of empty spaces (once inhabited or currently inhabited, but with no one present) with found photographs of times that no longer exist (images that are empty of personal memory). Appropriated images are stripped of their tone and cropped but nothing else is disturbed in the image (scratches, imperfections, contrast, etc.) where as the "space" images are adjusted as darkroom prints would be.

In (sub)Division, Libby Rowe seeks to create a societal identity through the exploration of the preconceived and perceived intimacy of "the neighborhood" in comparison to the reality of experience lived within planned communities. These fabricated neighborhoods are ideally fashioned to create community, but in practice separate residents with walls from the outside world of imagined security threats. Inside the walls, residents relate to their neighbors through a series of well-manicured facades. While in reality they are further separated by fences, erected for privacy, and streets arranged in rat-like mazes ending in cul-de-sacs, made to create intimacy between those families who are part of the sacred circles. (sub)Division is an installation of found imagery built into three dimensional house structuresarranged in a double-ended cul-de-sac.

In Kris Sanford's Between the Lines, a 1954 diary from a grandfather she never met serves as the inspiration and background in many of the photographs. The figures that emerge from the pages, taken from found photographs, represent the memories contained in the text. The photographs and diaries are personal and detailed, yet hopelessly incomplete at telling thewhole story. Shallow focus reveals small details, while obscuring the larger story. The individuals pictured serve as characters in a search to uncover lost stories of life, family, and love.

Anne Leighton Massoni is a Specialist Professor of Photography at Monmouth University in New Jersey. She holds a MFA in Photography from Ohio University and a BA in Photography and Anthropology from Connecticut College. Her work relates to both real and fabricated memories.

Libby Rowe holds a MFA from Syracuse University and a BFA from the University of Northern Iowa. Her work addresses issues of identity and belonging. Rowe is an Assistant Professor and the head of photography at University of Texas, San Antonio.

Originally from southeast Michigan, Kris Sanford lives in Mt. Pleasant, MI. She received her MFA in photography from Arizona State University in 2005. Sanford has exhibited work nationally and received a Contemporary Forum Artist Grant from the Phoenix Art Museum in 2010. She is a Lecturer at Central Michigan University.

March 5 – 23, 2012
Wynwood Project Space
Located at the Wesley Foundation
1210 Stanford Drive
Coral Gables

Opening Reception
Sunday, March 10, 2012
2 – 9 p.m.

Edmund Abaka
Cape Coast Castle
Digital Image

slavery to self determination

an exhibition celebrating black history month

The University of Miami's Department of Art & Art History and Africana Studies present "Slavery to Self Determination" an art exhibition celebrating Black History Month. The exhibition, curated by international art curator Ludlow Bailey, is free and open to the public.

The exhibition will include a series of lectures and will feature the works of African-American artists, Loni Johnson and T. Elliot Mensa, Haitian-American artist, Guy Syllien, Ethiopian artist, Merid Tafesse and Ghanaian Photographer and Historian, Edmund Abaka. The show will be in many ways a visual play about the spiritual journey of five African Diaspora Artists in search of enlightenment, authenticity and self determination in a vastly complicated and challenging world.

Ludlow Bailey has curated shows in Europe, the Caribbean and the United States. He is a lifelong student of Global Diaspora Affairs. He holds degrees from both Brown and Columbia Universities. He currently resides on the island of St. Thomas in the United States Virgin Islands.

February 8 – March 2, 2012
College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) Gallery
2200A NW Second Avenue
Miami

Opening Reception
Saturday, March 1-, 2012
2 – 9 p.m.

Panel Discussion with Artists and Curator
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
6 – 8 p.m.

Jeffrey Stern
Boshanlu, Tokyo, 2010
Inkjet Print

jeffrey stern: legerdemain

m.f.a. exhibition

Legerdemain, a solo exhibition by photographer Jeffrey Stern, features recent work that explores an unseen view of the interaction of people, their environment and the interplay of light. Through a series of 40 photographs, Stern has captured views from everyday life that we all pass by unaware of their existence.

February 6 – 24, 2012
Wynwood Project Space
2200A NW Second Avenue
Miami

Opening Reception
Saturday, February 11, 2012
2 – 9 p.m.

Jacqueline Gopie
Jordan's Girl 2, 2011
Acrylic on canvas

cane fair

featuring artwork by um mfa students

In honor of Art Basel Miami Beach, the College of Arts and Sciences Art and Art History Department presents the 4th Cane Fair featuring artwork of UM students earning their Masters in Fine Arts. Works on display include photography, sculpture, prints, installation, ceramics, painting and more. This exhibition will run from November 29, 2011 to January 27, 2012. Artists featured in this exhibition include Jacqueline Gopie (Painting), Sean Black (Photography), Abraham Camayd (Printmaking), Michelle Roy (Graphic Design), Cynthia Fleischmann (photography), Leah Brown (Sculpture) and many, many more.

November 29, 2011 – January 27, 2012
Wynwood Project Space
2200A NW Second Avenue
Miami

Reception
Saturday, January 14, 2012
6 – 10 p.m.

Kyle Trowbridge
Untitled (IL Duce), 2006
Graphite, Tea Stains, Watercolor
on paper

works on paper

featuring artwork by um faculty and students

The University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) Gallery presents its first Works on Paper exhibition at UM Wynwood Project Space. This exhibition will showcase prints and drawings on paper that are not photographic or completely digitally based. This exhibition will run the entire month of September and October. In celebration of the opening there will be a reception on October 8 from 2 p.m. – 9 p.m. Artists in the exhibition include Brian Curtis, Lise Drost, Thomas Engleman, Eddy Lopez, Barbara Scheer, Abraham Camayd, Tom Virgin, Lani Shapton, Kari Snyder, and Kyle Trowbridge.

September 6 – August 28
Wynwood Project Space
2200A NW Second Avenue
Miami

Reception
Saturday, October 8
2 – 9 p.m.

Mariah Fox Hausman
27 Club 2011, 2011
Mixed Media

annual faculty exhibition

exhibit of work by um faculty

The Department of Art and Art History offers a wide range of media for the students to study and has been hiring faculty with the specific goal of creating a very diverse range of approaches to both the handling of materials and philosophies towards art-making; this faculty exhibition of full time and part time faculty will show that range of approaches. This year’s faculty exhibition includes work by UM professors Kathleen Staples (painting), Lani Shapton (printmaking), Brian Curtis (drawing), Lamia Khorshid (photography), Kyle Trowbridge (painting), Mariah Fox Hausman (graphic design), and many more. Works on display include photography, sculpture, prints, ceramics, painting, drawing, video, and more.

September 21 – October 28
College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) Gallery
Located at the Wesley Foundation
1210 Stanford Drive
Coral Gables

Opening Reception
Friday, September 23
5 – 9 p.m.

Gallery Hours
Tuesday – Friday, 12:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Other viewing times can be arranged by appointment.

Sean Black (photo)
House of Photographs, 2011

incoming mfa exhibition

annual exhibit features work by new um grads

This exhibition includes work by new gradaute students Leah Brown (sculpture), Sean Black (photography), Carolyn Chema (photography), Cynthia Fleischmann (photography), Eddy Lopez (printmaking), Gerardo Olhovich-Perez (painting), and Colin Sherrell (sculpture).

August 23 – September 16
College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) Gallery
Located at the Wesley Foundation
1210 Stanford Drive
Coral Gables

Opening Reception
Friday, August 26
5 – 9 p.m.

Other viewing times can be arranged by appointment.

ashley ford: metrouroboros

m.f.a. exhibition

Metrouroboros is the examination of the contemporary non-place. The term, "non-place" as coined by French anthropologist Marc Augé, indicates a kind of place that has a sense of liminality. These are spaces that are common to our everyday lives, that we pass through with frequency yet don't hold enough significance to be regarded as places - highways, public restrooms, airports. Metrouroboros examines the psychological and sociological impact of these places and the interactions we have within them.

July 9 – 29
Wynwood Project Space
2200A NW 2nd Avenue

Opening Reception
Saturday, July 9
6 – 9 p.m.

ryan farrell: hybridity

m.f.a. exhibition

By definition, "hybridity" refers in its most basic sense to mixture. Our participation in the petroleum cycle and the seemingly disposable lifestyle we have grown accustomed to bring into question the possible consequences environmentally, socially, and politically that our involvement might come to bear. Ryan attempts to communicate his point of view on this whole mess through the manipulation and exploitation of the prime culprit, the automobile.

May 9 – 26
Wynwood Project Space
2200A NW 2nd Avenue

Opening Reception
Saturday, May 14
6 – 9 p.m.