Randolph College’s student docent club, FRAME, will host the 7th Annual Love at the Maier celebration on Friday, February 12, 2010.

Doors open at 5:30 p.m. Presentations begin at 6:00 p.m.

This year FRAME will focus on the theme “Reclaiming Self” and will highlight artists in the Museum’s permanent collection whose lives and artwork deal with issues of self actualization, and the expression of love for one’s own unique identity.

Admission is $5 for members, $10 for non-members, (Randolph College students free)

Love at the Maier: Reclaiming Self

Come visit the Maier Museum of Art to take advantage of an iPod tour. Our receptionist can assist you in checking out the Museum iPod, and give you instructions on its use. Museum hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 1 to 5 pm. Admission (and the iPod tour) is FREE!

Debbie Spanich (Museum Registrar) trying out the iPod tour with Olivia Travis '10

One of the artists in the Maier’s collection with no formal training, Hopi artist Dawakema’s works appeal to me with their vivid color and recurrent circular shapes. His name, Dawakema, means “House of the Sun.” He has shared his view of Native American culture since he was a young man. It may come as no surprise that Dawakema was once on staff with a detective agency; he strikes me as a quiet observer of details that communicate the larger picture. Even though I lack schooling in the symbolism and traditions of the Hopi, I respond to the sense of movement and passion in these two warriors. The Museum is fortunate to have three of his paintings in the collection. Though once long on display in Houston Chapel, they have rarely been seen by the public in recent years. Check out his other paintings in the online collection catalog (look for the hands).

Cloud Maidens http://maier.randolphcollege.edu/Obj114$35

Kildeer http://maier.randolphcollege.edu/Obj115$35

Warrior Gods by Milland Lomakema (Dawakema)

Saturday, January 23

5 to 7 p.m. Opening Reception for the 99th Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art. Meet the exhibition’s guest curator, Jonathan Fineberg, Gutgsell Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the four artists included in the exhibition.

7 p.m. Screening of Imagining America: Icons of 20th Century American Art, a two-hour PBS television special based on the book by Jonathan Fineberg and John Carlin.

Sunday,  January 24

2 p.m. 19th Annual Helen Clark Berlind Symposium panel discussion moderated by Jonathan Fineberg. For the 99th Annual Exhibition, Fineberg selected four contemporary artists whose work bears witness to and at times suggests critical issues about American cultural identity, as visible in the American landscape. By turns beautiful, critical, and humorous, the work of each artist articulates a unique view of natural and human-made scenery offering various descriptions of American values and preoccupations. Panelists will be the artists featured in the exhibition: Sang-ah Choi, Jeffrey Jones, Andrew Lenaghan and Joel Ross. A reception will follow.

Jonathan Fineberg is recipient of the Pulitzer Fellowship in Critical Writing, the NEA Art Critics’ Fellowship, and the College Art Association’s Award for Distinguished Teaching in the History of Art. He has curated major exhibitions in the United States and abroad and has published articles in numerous exhibition catalogs, journals, and newspapers ranging from Artforum to The New York Times. He specializes in modern and contemporary art, with a particular interest in emerging artists and in the psychology of art. In addition to Imagining America: Icons of 20th Century American Art, Fineberg’s books include: Christo and Jeanne-Claude: On the Way to the Gates (Yale), The Innocent Eye: Children’s Art and the Modern Artist (Princeton), and Art Since 1940: Strategies of Being (Prentice Hall and The People’s University Press, Beijing).

Our regular gallery hours (Tuesday through Sunday, 1-5 p.m.) will resume on Tuesday, January 19.

The Museum offices will be open 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. through December 23.

The offices will be closed December 24 - January 1, and will reopen January 4, 2010.

Happy Holidays!

From a note to the Museum from one of these students (spelling intact):

“Thank you for taking us on a tour of the art. I relly like the pichres. I really liked all the stuff in that place. It gave me a idiea and my idea is to be come a fames artest win I grow up. This was the grates place I ever been to and you’re a grat tour guide.”

Drawing by Rhyan from a thank you note

Following his mother’s advice to “do good with all the money you can spare,” William J. Maier , Jr., created the Sarah and Pauline Maier Scholarship Foundation, named after his mother and wife. It has focused most of its resources on the higher education of West Virginia students and on cultural activities in the Charleston, West Virginia area. In 2003, the Sarah and Pauline Maier Foundation was renamed the Maier Foundation, Inc.

A bronze bust of William J. Maier, Jr., is on view at the museum.

Here is a secret: some of the works in the collection have double lives. While on display in the gallery Healy’s Young Woman shows no sign of what is hidden behind her. Unnamed and unfinished, the face of a bearded man gazes from the reverse side of the board. His face is detailed, if rather monochromatic, but below his collar nothing grounds him. Lines furrow his forehead (perhaps in puzzlement over why the artist chose not to continue his painting?) On the front, a vibrant young woman enjoys the full attention of both artist and viewer.

In Prendergast’s painting, bathers take pleasure in the sun and spray as they occupy rough outcroppings. In the foreground but not prominent, the figures seem part of the scenery. On the reverse side is a similar seascape, containing only rocks and sea. In the finished scene the figures add a sense of scale, but in light of the work on the back, it appears that the artist may have considered leaving them out. The rocks dominate, and speak for themselves.

We don’t know the reason Healy and Prendergast chose not to complete the paintings on the hidden sides of these canvases. Nor did they paint over the images. These works have both public faces, and private:  Prendergast’s vibrant, unpeopled place; and the man destined to spend eternity with his face to the wall.