Cypher Space - the NMMoABlog

Show Us Your Boots! - 5/25/10

Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art  has been one kick of a show! At the opening, on May 15, we asked visitors to “Show Us Your Boots!” Little did we know that 112 boot wearers would show us their stuff. We are processing all the photos taken by Ellen Zieselman, Education Curator, and putting them up on our website. With this blog entry, we begin. Over the next few days, I will continue to post the boots and their wearers’ boot stories. Check out them out on the Show Us page>

We want you to join us for the fun and Sole Mates  fresh look at art in New Mexico. We will have a series of great events over the summer, in conjunction with the Sole Mates show, so check back with our website for details. You can also sign up for our e-newsletter for announcements of events.

And yes, we will host more “Show Us Your Boots” events, and at that point, we plan to move the pictures to Flickr, so we can see boots and hear stories from around the world.

(above) The boots of Joseph Traugott, Curator of Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art

Anne Noggle - 5/5/10

Katherine Ware, Curator of Photography

Pilot, photographer, professor, poet: Anne Noggle (1922-2005) was a woman of many talents.  Noggle didn’t begin her career as a photographer until she was forty-three, but quickly gained recognition with her witty and honest work.  By 1982, she had received a Guggenheim Fellowship and she later received three National Endowment for the Arts awards and an honorary doctorate from the University of New Mexico.  She was the first curator of photography here at the New Mexico Museum of Art, serving from 1970-1976, while also working as an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico.  

One of Noggle’s most significant contributions to the field of photo history was the show she organized with San Francisco Bay Area photographer Margery Mann, Women of Photography:  An Historical Survey.  The exhibition -- which premiered in San Francisco in 1975, before traveling to this museum and then to Milwaukee and Wellesley, Mass. -- was a groundbreaking survey of women’s contributions to the medium from its inception up to the 1970s.  The accompanying book became an important reference and an inspiration for young artists.  

Noggle, who had served as a U.S. Airforce captain before turning to photography, also wrote and illustrated For God, Country, and the Thrill of It (1983), a book about women Air Force pilots in World War II. Noggle is known for her portraiture, especially of the elderly, and her self-portraiture, including pictures of herself recovering from a facelift and nudes made when she was in her seventies.  A gathering after the death of her uncle stimulated her interest in portraits.  

“I looked up at these people and saw their faces, and I loved what I saw.  I saw beauty in their expressions and in the people they were,” the artist told reporter Beth Castro of the New Mexico Lobo (Oct. 11, 1989).  Asked about her self-portraits, Noggle said, “People tell me that the photographs of me are not in any way flattering.  They are not meant to be.  They are supposed to be real.” (interview with Anne Wilkes Tucker, Art Journal, 1993).  

The museum is pleased to have in its collection a group of seventy of the artist’s photographs. Vertical Stance is included in the 2010 exhibition Sole Mates: Cowboy Boots and Art exhibition.  For more images of Noggle’s work, see the book Silver Lining: Photographs by Ann Noggle (1983).

(above) Vertical Stance (from the series Earthbound - plate 26), 1979. Anne Noggle. Chromogenic print; 12 7/8 x 9 inches. Collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art. Gift of Patrick Nagatani, 2008 (2008.46)

Treasures from the Vogel Collection - 2/26/10

Treasures from the Vogel Collection
A Visible Sounds, by Edda Renouf
Becky James, Intern - 2/17/2010

Hello, I’m Becky James, and intern at the New Mexico Museum of Art. Recently I’ve been working on researching a large gift to the museum from the collection of Dorothy and Herbert Vogel. The Vogels have been collecting art since their wedding in 1962, and had amassed a collection of over 4,000 works of modernist and contemporary art, representing more than 170 artists.

In the early 1990s, the Vogels teamed up with the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, D.C., to donate 2,500 works from their collection to American museums across the country. Through a program called The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States, the Vogels decided to donate fifty pieces from their collection to one institution in each of the fifty states. Fortunately, the New Mexico Museum of Art was selected as the recipient for our state.

Through my research of this collection, I have become especially fond of one of the works: A Visible Sounds, a work on paper by Edda Renouf. In this work, I am drawn to the juxtaposition of the simple process with which the work was made, and the artist’s preoccupation with rendering invisible and intangible forces visible. In Renouf’s artist statement, she states that her work often relates to "the four natural elements; time and memory; and that of sound and music." In A Visible Sounds, Renouf incised the paper then covered a rectangular area with a cloud of blue and gray pastel. The raised edges of the incised lines in the paper are saturated with the pastel, and from this matrix of lines, the color flows and dissipates outward towards a thin graphite border. Through this process, I believe Renouf meditated about air and water, and about the harmony between the lines and pigment as a visible manifestation of aural harmonies.

At the bottom of this work is written, in graphite, “for Herb and Dorothy - best wishes for 1978, love Edda.” This note adds a very personal and sentimental quality to the work, and I am thankful that it has come to stay here in New Mexico.

A Visible Sounds is one of three works by Renouf given to the Museum through this program, and one of over seventy works by the artist in the The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States program.of the fifty states. Fortunately, the New Mexico Museum of Art was selected as the recipient for our state.

(above) A Visible Sounds,1978
Edda Renouf
Incisions and blue and gray pastel chalk on Arches paper with fixative
8¾ x 7¾” (irregular)

To view more of the Vogel’s collection, please visit the website for the Fifty Works for Fifty States program at http://vogel5050.org.

To view more works from the collection that have found a new home at the New Mexico Museum of Art, please visit http://vogel5050.org/#institutions/31.

Happy 100th Birthday, Milton Rogovin!

December marks the one hundredth birthday of an extraordinary ordinary man, the American social documentary photographer Milton Rogovin. Mr. Rogovin began his career as an opthamologist but soon took an interest in photography. In the 1940s, he and his wife Anne became increasingly involved with civil rights and pro-labor movements, as well as raising money to defend accused spies Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. In 1957, Mr. Rogovin was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities and was identified with the Communist political party. Publicly ostracized and finding it difficult to survive financially, Mr. Rogovin turned to the camera as his primary vehicle for expression. His commitment was, he says, to represent “the forgotten people of the world.” He is best known for his series of images capturing the struggles, as well as the vitality, of a neighborhood on the lower west side of Buffalo, New York, and returned, over several decades, to photograph some of the same people. The two pictures illustrated here depict the same couple, photographed in 1974 and again in 1984. 

In 2008, Wes and Julie Nichols made a generous gift to the museum of twenty-five of Mr. Rogovin’s photographs, the first works by the artist to join the collection.  A small selection will be included in the exhibition New Arrivals: Works from the Collection (February 12 – April 4, 2010). 

Mr. Rogovin, we salute you in your centenary year, not only for your accomplishments but also for your great empathy toward humankind. 

More information about Milton Rogovin is available on his website: http://www.miltonrogovin.com/home.php

(right) Untitled from the series Lower West Side, 1972
Milton Rogovin (American, b. 1909)
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Wes and Julie Nichols, 2008
2008.53.1

(left) Untitled from the series Lower West Side, 1984
Milton Rogovin (American, b. 1909)
Gelatin silver print
Gift of Wes and Julie Nichols, 2008
2008.53.2

Moving an Obelisk – 9/29/2009

Moving An Obelisk – 9/29/2009
Michelle Gallagher Roberts, Chief Registrar

At 5:30 a.m. on a hot and humid August morning, I stood on the Mall in Washington, D.C. It was time to bring home Fritz Scholder’s Obelisk, which had been on loan to the National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI) for the past year. NMAI had borrowed this 15-1/2 foot sculpture from the New Mexico Museum of Art (NMMoA) in order supplement their exhibition, Fritz Scholder: Indian Not Indian. It’s very common for museums to borrow works owned by other museums and from private individuals in order to create exhibitions. It is one of the jobs of the registrar to implement these loans.

In this case that meant flying to Washington, D.C. to oversee the installation and the deinstallation of Scholder’s Obelisk. Weighing in at 1500 lbs., this sculpture required a lot of careful planning and skilled people to move it across country. Cranes were required at both ends of the move, as well as specially-trained art movers. Working in D.C. on the Mall required additional considerations. We had to close one of the streets, which is why we had to start so early, not to mention unsuccessfully trying to beat the heat of the day.

After taking over 5 hours to remove the sculpture from the concrete pad where it had been secured and pack it in a custom crate, Obelisk started its 36 hour ride to Santa Fe. I flew back to Santa Fe the next day in order to meet the truck on the other end. Since Santa Fe streets are as difficult to traverse as those in Washington, D.C. it was another early morning for me. The installation at NMMoA took just under two hours. Obelisk is now back home in the West Sculpture Garden where it should stay for many years to come.

Interesting facts about Scholder’s Obelisk:

• After unsuccessfully trying to buy an Egyptian obelisk, Fritz Scholder decided to create his own.
• The hieroglyphics inscribed on the side were randomly placed there by Fritz Scholder. The only “real” words are the names of Fritz and his then-wife Ramona. Scholder had their names translated into hieroglyphics while in Egypt.
• There is a cat image on Obelisk representing Scholder’s cat at the time.
• Obelisk was cast in 1987 at the Santa Fe Art Foundry.
• Of the six cast, NMMoA’s Obelisk is the only one owned by a public institution.
• The sculpture is hollow.
• The sculpture was cast in five pieces that were welded together.

Deinstallation on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
Installation in the West Sculpture Garden, NMMoA, in Santa Fe

Being Alone in the Desert - 8/14/09

Katherine Ware, Curator of Photography

Holly Roberts is one of my favorite artists. Roberts likes to use oil paint on top of photographs, so the pictures feel like they are both of this world and of the imagination. Sometimes she uses events from her own life as subjects, but her work always projects universal human themes. 

Since I moved to New Mexico last year, Roberts’s picture Being Alone in the Desert has been on my mind.  A hulking, blue figure dominates the picture, surrounded by the big empty sky and a patch of land sparsely studded with plants, emphasizing aloneness. Is the figure afraid, crossing its arms protectively against the cold and the unknown, or is it taking a defensive posture? Is the open-mouthed grimace chattering with chill or terror, or is it baring its teeth aggressively? The aura around the figure is both red and black, which could suggest anger, dark thoughts, a visitation of spirits, or even simply the glow and shadow created by the sun. 

The most inexplicable part of the picture is the patch of black-and-white at the figure’s throat, the only part of the underlying photograph that isn’t covered with paint.  It shows a jumble of unidentifiable forms that might be the figure’s innards or is perhaps symbolic of inner turmoil. Even though we can see right through this person like an X-Ray, he or she remains unknown to us, holding on to its mysteries just like the desert. I like that ambiguity.

Being Alone in the Desert, 1986
Holly Roberts
Oil on gelatin silver print
28 3/8 x 24 ¾ inches
Purchased with funds donated by Mel and Dickie Pfaelzer
1986.563.1

Painting demos - 6/29/09

Martha Landry, Special Events Manager

As the organizer of public education programs, I wanted to plan events that evoked a sense of summer, of Santa Fe’s impressionist light & color and strong sense of place, while providing a casual hands-on experience.

At the museum this summer, I’m enjoying the paintings in American Impressionism. The sense of light & color, of a particular time & place in America, is wonderful. So...“Experience Santa Fe en plein air: Sunday Outdoor Painting Classes.”

This is Lee Rommel in our central garden patio. Classes are taught here, amid the poppies and giant hollyhocks.  Lee has taught art classes and workshops in Santa Fe and the Southwest for the past 37 years and is a member of Plein Air Painters of New Mexico.  Students bring their favorite media...oil, water color, pastel, pencil. Lee teaches in all styles. 

We have had held two of our four scheduled classes.  Students range from the experienced to the novice, who share a spirit of adventure.  

Anyone who is interested can find more information about the classes.

Cypher Space - May 26, 2009

Devon Skeele, Librarian/Webmaster

Surprised by the look of the website?

The site has a new look, and has much more content than it did before. Regular visitors may notice fresher colors and maybe the new logo. But what I really want is for you to be drawn in, and find art or information that brings you into the museum or back to the site for more exploring.

The blog is part of what is new. As the webperson (and librarian), I took the liberty of writing the introductory blog. I am new to the art museum world, and what surprised me here were the stories. The stories behind works of art, the artist’s life or events in the world, have made me love (or sometimes loathe) a piece, but with some understanding of it, rather than merely a gut-reaction to it.

One piece in the current Intertwined exhibition, brings an emotional response whenever I think about it, now that I know the story. The Eye of the Beholder presents a delicate, lacy body-covering below a glaring leathery face mask of stitched grapefruit peels. It made me uneasy. But, knowing that the piece was created to honor the artist’s sister, a beautiful young woman who had become disfigured and was literally stitched back together, I now see the work as powerful and proud.

So, the blog will bring stories of some of the art in the museum, but also of the museum itself and its staff. I hope that these stories will let visitors find layers of meaning in the works of art, and meaning in a public museum of art.  I think the staff’s real commitment to bringing forth meaning they have found in work here will be very evident in the blogs in coming months. Behind-the-scenes stories, curators’ perspectives, artists’ quandaries and so forth will connect human experience with art, to increase understanding. We hope you will enjoy the Cypher Space.