Posing Beauty in African American Culture explores the contested ways in which African and African American beauty have been represented in historical and contemporary contexts through a diverse range of media including photography, film, video, fashion, advertising, and other forms of popular culture such as music and the Internet. Throughout the Western history of art and image-making, the relationship between beauty and art has become increasingly complex within contemporary art and popular culture.

The images in this exhibition challenge idealized forms of beauty in art by examining their portrayal and exploring a variety of attitudes about race, class, gender, popular culture and politics as seen through the aesthetics of representation. The first of three thematic sections, Constructing a Pose, considers the interplay between the historical and the contemporary, between self-representation and imposed representation, and the relationship between subject and photographer. The second theme, Body and Image, questions the ways in which our contemporary understanding of beauty has been constructed and framed through the body. The last section, Modeling Beauty & Beauty Contests, invites us to reflect upon the ambiguities of beauty, its impact on mass culture and individuals and how the display of beauty affects the ways in which we see and interpret the world and ourselves.

Posing Beauty explores contemporary understandings of beauty by framing the notion of aesthetics, race, class, and gender within art, popular culture, and political contexts. This exhibit features approximately 84 works drawn from public and private collections and will be accompanied by a book published by W.W. Norton. Artists in the exhibit include, among others, Carrie Mae Weems, Eve Arnold, Renee Cox, Anthony Barboza, Bruce Davidson, and Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe.

The exhibition is organized by the Department of Photography & Imaging at New York University, Tisch School of the Arts. The exhibition is curated by Deborah Willis, University Professor and Chair of the Department.

James Grashow creates works in a variety of media that address themes of man, nature and mortality. The scale of his work ranges from large environmental installations, through which the viewer traverses, to the delicate and contained world of his houseplants - where tiny fabricated homes and buildings replace flowers and buds in intricately constructed bouquets. He is also a well-known woodcut artist. His prints have appeared regularly in the New York Times and in virtually every well known periodical and publication through out the country.

For the past two and a half years, Grashow has been working on a large scale three-dimensional version of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's famous 17th century Fountain of Four Rivers in Rome, complete with a bearded Poseidon holding his trident at the center, blaring trumpets, horses rearing forcefully, sea nymphs, rocks, waves, and an assortment of dolphins. Grashow calls this his most ambitious work to date and its premiere is here at the Taubman.

Recurring, a new site-specific sculpture, will consist of four identical rooms arranged into a unified form, in a sense, under one roof. The rooms are the basis of the formal and conceptual strategy that underpins a sensation of spatial recurrence. Each room is in a different orientation to the others and can be viewed by walking around the entire sculpture. I'm interested in an architectural reorganization to create relational associations (between the rooms) that expand upon the psychological implications of displacement and disorientation. Through the introduction of repetitive pre-existing spatial structures and conditions, the resulting work explores the nature of (unresolved, compulsive, repetitive) memory.

This LA based artist/architect will be creating a new work especially for the Taubman Museum that reflects his interest in re-envisioning house-like forms. Made on site, this structure reveals four versions of the same room, each offering a slightly different version of itself, all under the same roof. In one sense, this work expands on the psychological implications of displacement and disorientation. The work also intertwines metaphors of permanence and impermanence, interior and exterior within the various components of this sculptural form.

According to the artist, "My interest in the generic quality of these building materials has to do with setting up a situation where, because the viewer is already familiar with the material content of the work, the focus then shifts onto what the sculpture seems to be doing formally. On the other hand, the symbol of home or building that the materials allude to is specific and so that might lead people in a certain direction when they're thinking about it."

In Jamison's allegorical egg tempera paintings of women, animals are drawn to the subject like an enchanted Snow White. Compositionally, figures appear either as cropped and isolated parts of the body, or as formal Renaissance inspired portraits. Medical illustrations of the head are appropriated and modified into archetypal images that suggest a dream state. The bodies are decorated with a flowery hot pink, extremely feminine pattern. Sewing implements, thread and lace honor traditional female arts. Fairy tales, scientific, botanical and avian illustrations, Persian miniatures and fashion design are influences in Jamison's work.

Jane Hammond's Fallen is an installation work concerning aspects of memorialization and remembrance of those who have died in Iraq. The work was first displayed in New York in 2005 accompanied by a wall text that read, "Each unique handmade leaf is inscribed by the artist with the name of a US soldier killed in Iraq." The exhibition begins with 1511 leaves. The work was acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art in 2007. It will open at the Taubman with more than 4000 leaves installed by the artist on a pedestal approximately 30 feet long.

Dividing her time between Washington, D.C. and her home in Piney Point, Maryland, Jae Ko uses rolled paper soaked over time in water containing sumi ink or natural dyes to form spare, fluid-like sculptural objects. The Korean-born artist came to the United States to earn her MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Her sculptural variations on the manipulation and coloring of tightly wound spools of paper transcend their materials and transform their space.

In both her wall and floor works, these rolls of various widths and lengths take on the appearance of three-dimensional gesture, both man-made and mechanical. They evoke a type of fluidity captured in time, closely resembling calligraphy or other forms of writing, and lyrical movement of all kinds. Defying narrative or distinct references, they allow for open interpretation or act as resting spots for our thoughts and feelings.

According to Ko: "The edges of my infinitely long bands of paper, create line drawings which spiral, tighten and loosen depending on how they're rolled. Saturating the pre-set paper form in baths of Sumi ink such as saffron and indigo, the flat pieces of paper elongate and swell from the moisture." While visually bridging in appearance materials such as velvet or charred wood, Jae Ko's work offers sculptural surfaces that compel inspection while suggesting the territory of deep space.

Jae Ko received her B.F.A. from Wako University, Tokyo, Japan and her M.F.A from the Maryland Institute of Art, Baltimore, MD. She has exhibited in Japan and throughout the United States since 1985, including the Uneo Museum, Tokyo, Japan, the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington, DC, the Kennedy Museum of Art, Athens, OH and the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, Connecticut. She has been awarded numerous fellowships including from The Pollock-Krasner Foundation and Virginia Museum of Fine Art.

A selection of American naïve paintings from the Colonel Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch Collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. will provide an interesting contrast to the architecture of the Taubman Museum of Art. The 35 works in the exhibition were created by folk artists who had little or no training in the arts. Portraits, landscapes, sporting and maritime scenes, and depictions of memorable historical events will engage audiences with their unique qualities of simplicity, directness and creative vitality in color and design. Works on view will include The Connecticut Valley by Thomas Chambers, The Grave of William Penn by Edward Hicks, Joseph Slade by Ammi Phillips, and Bare Knuckles by George A. Hayes, as well as works by William Matthew Prior, George Washington Mark, and more.

American Naïve Paintings from the Garbisch Collection at the National Gallery of Art is made possible by grants from the Altria Foundation and the Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson, Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, with additional support from WDBJ7.

According to the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore, "visionary art refers to art produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself." Unusual Suspects will present more than fifty works from eight regional collections and provide a sampling of the breadth and range of the artists who work in this manner. Benny Carter, Missionary Mary Proctor, Purvis Young, S.L. Jones, and Jacob Kass are just a few of the well-known artists whose works will be on view.

California-based architects and designers Joshua Stein and Rob Ley shift their interests between the fields of art, architecture and design, often collaborating with specialists inside and outside those fields to investigate and explore new forms. Reef is part of their continuing investigation of how artificial life may be driven by behavior rather than intelligence. The work also explores the role emerging material technology, such as shape memory alloys, can play in the sensitive reprogramming of architectural and public space. This unique exploration of technology shifts from the bio-mimetic to the bio-kinetic while liberating and extending architecture's capacity to produce a sense of willful intent.

Reef is supported by partial funding from the AIA Upjohn Research Grant and the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts. The project was made possible by the generous support and assistance of Dynalloy Inc., the makers of Flexinol.

This small exhibition of lithographs, etchings, aquatints, woodcuts, wood engravings, and one drawing is help in conjunction with the Roanoke Children's Theater's presentation of The Boxcar Children. Like much of what is seen and heard in the play, these works, created at the height of the Depression, depict the difficulties of life and the hardships of survival in both rural and urban America in the 1930s. The 17 works on view were created by some of the key artist of the 30s, some working independently, while others worked in government sponsored programs of the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. Together, through the use of line, texture, shadow, contrasts between black and white, and the depiction of the figure, they created an image of the potential cruelty of nature, the grittiness of the city, the loss of pride, the hardship and dignity of labor, and the difficulties of keeping the family intact.

Sordid and Sacred: The Beggars in Rembrandt's Etchings
November 20, 2009 – February 7, 2010

The exhibition features 35 rare etchings by Rembrandt van Rijn created between 1629 and 1648. Widely recognized as the greatest practitioner of the etch ing technique in the history of art, Rembrandt created 300 prints that constitute a body of work unparalleled in richness and beauty. He repeatedly chose beggars as the subject for his etchings. Seen as loathsome creatures in art as in society, Rembrandt's beggars also portray biblical figures, creating a crossover between street life and sacred history.

Sordid and Sacred: The Beggars in Rembrand's Etchings is drawn from the John Villarino Collection and organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA.

Sponsored by:

Jumpstart and Holler: Mike Houston and Martin Mazorra
November 20, 2009 – February 7, 2010

Mike Houston and Martin Mazorra are master printers whose gigantic two and three-dimensional multi-paneled composite woodcuts might be something that Rembrandt would be involved in if he were alive today. In addition to works previously created by Houston and Mazorra over the past several years, the exhibition will showcase a new series of more than 17 unique large-scale works in the form of a three-dimensional "tent city" based on the theme of the beggar in modern society.

Russell Richards: Thoughts About Life and Death
November 20, 2009 – February 7, 2010

Charlottesville-based Richards works primarily in printmaking, developing multi-plate methods in etching and lithography and lately, exploring painting techniques. He is known for fantastical and imaginative imagery that is electrifying, sometimes brutal, and always uncompromising. The exhibition will feature works from several of Richards' recent series, including City, Dinosaurs, and the topsy-turvy Inaccurate Maps.

Peter Eudenbach: Cause and Effect
November 20, 2009 – February 14, 2010

Eudenbach is a conceptual artist who incorporates a variety of media in his investigations that transform the function and design of ordinary objects in to serious play. Inspired by the Surrealists and DADA art movements from the early part of the 20th century, the exhibition will showcase Time Transfixed, a re-do of the famous Rene Magrite work, and Tours de Revolution, which mixes Ferris Wheels and Marcel Duchamp with Gustave Eiffel's Tour Eiffel, among other works.

17th Century Florentine Paintings: Selections from the Haukohl Family Collection

This exhibition present works from the largest collection of privately held seventeenth century Florentine art in America in conjunction with the opening of its new Randall Stout designed building on November 8. 17th Century Florentine Painting: Selections from the Haukohl Family Collection showcases exquisite paintings by Cesare Dandini, Alessandro Gherardini, Giovanni Domenico Ferretti, and others; artists whose works are predominately seen only in Italy. Additional artists featured in 17th Century Florentine Painting: Selections from the Haukohl Family Collection include Cecco Bravo, Jacopo da Empoli, Felice Ficherelli, Onorio Marinari, Simone Pignoni, Giovan Battista Vanni, and Emile Antoine Bourdelle. The exhibition also assembles, for the first time in the modern history of art, the works of a unique family of painters, the Dandini family: Cesare Dandini, Ottaviano Dandini, Pietro Dandini, and Vincenzo Dandini.

Earthly Delight: Judith Leiber Handbags

Judith Leiber fashioned her first handbag upon opening a gift package bought for a friend and finding the shiny metal box inside scratched. The artist in her quickly surfaced as she covered the box in crystals. That was over fifty years ago, and her unique designs have been sold in specialty stores, exhibited in major museums, and accompanied many of the First Ladies during presidential inaugurations ever since. An exquisitely designed installation of approximately thirty handbags and pillboxes will highlight selections from the more than 110 Leiber hand-held works of art owned by the museum.