Roy Lichtenstein: Prints 1956-97
From the Collections of Jordan D. Schnitzer and his Family Foundation
NORTH GALLERIES
February 25– May 7, 2006


Roy Lichtenstein. Red Lamps (from the Interior series). 1990, published in 1991. Lithograph, woodcut, and screen print. Collection of the Jordan Schnitzer Family Foundation. Courtesy of the Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.

Roy Lichtenstein is famous for his comic book images and Benday dot patterns, which many consider the most enduring of all pop art imagery. Over more than four decades, he exlored every printmaking medium, producing more than 300 print editions. This exhibition of 77 lithographs, screen prints, etchings, woodblocks, and mixed-media prints offerd an accessible and spirited survey of his work. Among the great holdings of the Schnitzer collections are six prints from Lichtenstein's riff on Monet's Cathedral Series (1969) and several of the monumental Interiors from 1990/91.

At the Henry, the exhibition featured a variety of additional works including drawings and sculpture. Also featured was a 19th-century photograph by Édouard-Denis Baldus that was the original source for Monet's Rouen Cathedral series, demonstrating Lichtenstein's playful distance from his sources.

From portraiture to abstraction to modern art history, Lichtenstein left no style or subject matter untapped. From his first proto-pop image completed in 1956, to the serigraph he was completing at the time of his death in 1997; the Henry exhibition provided firsthand the spectrum of Lichtenstein's remarkable life work.

Roy Lichtenstein. Explosion (from Portfolio 9). 1967. Lithograph. Collection of Jordan D. Schnitzer.
Courtesy of the Estate of Roy Lichtenstein.


Organized by Elizabeth A. Brown. Curated by Chris Bruce for the Washington State University Art Gallery. Support for this exhibition and related educational and outreach programs was made possible by a grant from the Jordan D. Schnitzer Family Foundation. The Presenting Sponsor is Mellon Financial Corporation. Additional funding is provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, ArtsFund, the Washington State Arts Commission, and donors to the Special Exhibition Initiative. In-kind support provided by The Stranger, Pyramid Ales, and Hogue Cellars.

Kelly Mark thanks everyone for everything
LOBBY / ELEVATOR / MEZZANINE
February 25– May 7, 2006

Kelly Mark. 33 Minute Stare. 1996. VHS transferred to DVD.
Courtesy of the artist.

Kelly Mark's videos and performances throw the rote patterns of everyday life into humorous relief. Mark intervenes in the social geography in unexpected ways with mundane yet absurd actions: sprinting at a crosswalk, staring in an elevator, staging a protest of nothing. Scattered on monitors throughout the museum's public spaces, Mark's videos inject normal goings-on with an engaging wit.

Curated by Assistant Curator Sara Krejewski and generously supported by ArtsFund and donors to the Henry Gallery Association. In-kind support provided by Hotel Max.

The Empty Room
NORTH GALLERIES
February 4 – May 14, 2006

A dam Bartos. U.N., Room GA 200, Chairs with Speakers. 1990, printed 1997. Chromogenic print.
Henry Art Gallery, gift of Burt and Jane Berman. Courtesy of the artist.

This exhibition presented an array of artistic explorations of vacant spaces. When rooms are emptied of people, are they haunted by our absence? Can they ever be neutral sites devoid of meaning? Drawn from the Henry's Monsen Collection of Photography, The Empty Room included works by Andre Kertesz, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Lyons.

Curated by Assistant Curator Sara Krajewski.

Maya Lin: Systematic Landscapes
STROUM AND EAST GALLERIES
April 22– September 3, 2006

Maya Lin. Water Line. 2006. Aluminum tubing and paint. Photo: Colleen Chartier..

In 2006, the Henry devoted its expansive Stroum and East Galleries to a dramatic exhibition of new work by Maya Lin. Systematic Landscapes, organized by Henry Art Gallery Director Richard Andrews, focuses on a trio of large-scale sculptural installations that offer a different means for viewers to encounter and comprehend the landscape. 2x4 Landscape is a vast hill or wave built of 65,000 boards set on end; Water Line, a distorted grid in space, can be walked under or viewed from above. Visitors can walk through Blue Lake Pass, modeling an actual mountain range near the artist's Colorado home that is sliced into a grid.

Systematic Landscapes complements the Confluence Project, a grand collaboration between Lin, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, the Nez Perce Tribe, the Lewis and Clark Commemorative Committee of Vancouver/Clark County, and the Friends of Lewis and Clark of Pacific County. The models and designs on view mark sites of contact along the Columbia River between Native Americans and the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

Maya Lin has continuously addressed notions of landscape and geologic phenomena in her work. She has an extraordinary ability to convey complex and poetic ideas using simple forms and natural materials. She thinks and works in a scale that relates to the land. This exhibition is a meditation on our relationship to landscape, whether direct or reinterpreted via computer or satellite imagery. Wedding a deep interest in forces and forms of nature with a long-term investigation into the possibilities of sculptural form to embody meaning, Systematic Landscapes offers a rich, immersive experience for visitors. Following the model of previous Henry exhibitions of the work of Ann Hamilton and James Turrell, Systematic Landscapes confirms the museum's commitment to the art of our time and to the possibilities of contemporary installation art.

Organized for the Henry Art Gallery by Director Richard Andrews. Major support for this exhibition has been provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, ArtsFund, The Boeing Company, PONCHO, and donors to the Special Exhibition Initiative. Additional support provided by Peter Norton Family Foundation, Kongsgaard-Goldman Foundation, Haas Charitable Trusts, Simpson Timber Company – Northwest, NBBJ Group, Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, Trillium Corporation, and the Washington State Arts Commission. In-kind support provided by The Seattle Times, KUOW 94.9, Grant Hyatt Seattle, KrekowJenningsInc., Vulcan Inc., and The Stranger.

Master of Fine Arts 2006
NORTH GALLERIES
May 27 – June 18, 2006

Tivon Rice. Apotheosis (detail). Computer monitors, polyethylene.
Twelve panels, 6'x 2'x 3'. Image courtesy of the artist.

Each year, the Henry presents the University of Washington’s School of Art, Master of Fine Arts annual exhibition. Throughout their graduate program, students have worked with faculty advisers and other artists to expand concepts, develop advanced techniques, discuss critical issues, and emerge with a vision and direction for their own work. Pieces in the exhibition are selected by the students and their thesis committees, with curatorial assistance from Jim Rittimann, Henry Art Gallery head preparator and exhibition designer.

Ceramics
Benjamin Hirschkoff
Susie Jungune Lee
Matthew Mitros

Fibers
Michael Cepress
Anna Lambert

Metals
Elizabeth Majewski
Christiane Tran

Photography
Crystal Anderson
Elysha Diaz

Painting
Timothy Brown
Christopher Carter
Stephanie Pierce
Carly Slone
Kimberly Trowbridge
Shane Walsh

Sculpture
Tivon Rice

Visual Communication Design
Timothy Fair
Callie Neylan
Chang-Ling Wu

The University of Washington’s School of Art Master of Fine Arts annual exhibition is organized with curatorial assistance from Jim Rittimann, Henry Art Gallery head preparator and exhibition designer.

And Deer and Trees and Things:
Videos by Cat Clifford
ELEVATOR
June 20– August 20, 2006

Cat Clifford. To Walk Like a Deer. 2004. Still from DVD. Courtesy of the artist and Howard House, Seattle.

This exhibition continued the Henry’s inventive use of interstitial spaces for exhibition. In her three short videos, Clifford observes, records, and inhabits rural Western landscapes. Clifford created two works during an artist's residency in Banner, Wyoming where the solace and slow pace fostered an intuitive connection to the wildlife in this isolated region. The third video depicts the artist making a simple and profound gesture of refuge in the dramatic setting of a burnt forest in the North Cascades.

Curated by Associate Curator Sara Krajewski.

Current: River Photography from the Monsen Collection
NORTH GALLERIES
June 20–September 17, 2006

Joel Sternfeld. A Man on the Banks of the Mississippi, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. 1985. Chromogenic development (Ektacolor) print mounted on Plexiglas. Henry Art Gallery, Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection. Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York. Photo: Bridget Nowlin.

Over the ages, rivers have sculpted the western American landscape. These same rivers symbolically trace the paths of U.S. history. On view in this exhibition, photographs by William Henry Jackson and Carleton Watkins, which initially documented expeditions, quickly sparked the public’s fancy with views of sublime, unusual beauty. Recent images by Mitch Epstein and Joel Sternfeld underscore how powerfully rivers still captivate our imagination. Both the historical and contemporary works reflect upon the contentious relationship between humans and the forces of nature we have long sought to harness.

Curated by Associate Curator Sara Krajewski and generously supported by donors to the Henry Gallery Association.

Threshold: Byron Kim 1990-2004
NORTH GALLERIES
July 8–September 17, 2006

Byron Kim. Emmett at Twelve Months. 1994. Egg tempura on wood. Collection of Delores and Byungseol An.

Asian American artist Byron Kim burst on the art scene in the 1993 Whitney Biennial with Synecdoche, a remarkable multi-panel work that defined a new approach to painting. This grid of hundreds of 8x10-inch panels, each painted a single hue of peach, beige, or brown, represented the skin tone of many individual sitters Kim had painted from life. Now numbering 400 panels, identified by the subject’s name and arranged alphabetically, Synecdoche is both abstract and representational, both conceptual and emotionally inflected. Although Synecdoche seems to belong equally to opposed genres of painting—the abstract and the figurative—it in fact occupies a unique position between the two, what the artist calls a “threshold”. This exhibition, the first museum survey of this insightful artist, explores four bodies of monochrome painting that occupy that meaningful territory.

Color in its various aspects—as fact, as signifier, and as metaphor—continues to dominate Kim’s work. Threshold includes small canvases whose colors pinpoint particular events and places in his childhood, such as Miss Mushinski (First Big Crush), 1996, and 1984 Dodge Wagon, 1994; a series based on celadon pottery of Asia (Koryo Green Glaze #1, 1995 –96); and wall-sized landscapes inspired by poet William Wordsworth (I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud, 1997). His Sunday Paintings—sky studies that form a personal journal—include notations of place and sometimes the addition of text, suggesting how painting can serve as a kind of personal journal for the artist.

Threshold: Byron Kim 1990–2004 was conceived by independent curator Eugenie Tsai and organized by Constance Lewallen, Senior Curator for Exhibitions at the University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. The exhibition has been supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and The Peter Norton Family Foundation. Presentation at the Henry was organized by Elizabeth Brown, Chief Curator, and made possible by ArtsFund, PONCHO, and donors to the Special Exhibition Initiative. In kind support provided by Grand Hyatt Seattle.

Akio Takamori: The Laughing Monks
NORTH GALLERIES
July 8–October 22, 2006

Akio Takamori. Jittoku. 2006. Stoneware with underglaze. Detail. Courtesy of the artist.

Marking the 80th anniversary of the Henry Art Gallery, the museum began a series of creative explorations of its collections. In the previous year’s exhibition 150 Works of Art, artists Annie Han and Daniel Mihalyo devised a wholly new way to install over a century and a half of pictorial works. For this exhibition, the Henry invited Akio Takamori to help reexamine three-dimensional objects. The artist created a pair of installations combining objects from the collections with his own sculptures.

Head of ceramics at the University of Washington School of Art, Takamori has developed a practice of representational sculpture built out of clay. His distinctive figures incorporate elements from several aesthetic traditions, including American west coast funk, traditional Asian calligraphy, Japanese folk ceramics, and Edo period ink drawings. In dialogue with his exploration of the museum’s collections, Takamori moved from juxtaposing vessels and figural ceramics to examining pairs of things, exploring symmetry and mirror reversals. His installation in the North Galleries incorporated various aspects of the ceramics collections, including vessels and figures made in Asia and the U.S., as well as photographs,
costumes and textiles.

Both halves of Takamori’s installation featured a pair of new sculptures based on the laughing (or mad) monks of Zen Buddhist iconography, Kanzan and Jittoku. Although the pairing of these figures with the objects explored aspects of how these legendary figures signify states of mind and philosophical attitudes, at the same time they simply populated the galleries like viewers do. Their attitudes helped suggest ways for visitors to consider diverse selections from the Henry Art Gallery collections.

This exhibition was one of an occasional series where artists with varied perspectives explore the resources of the Henry Art Gallery collections. At the same time it complemented Takamori’s mid-career survey at the Tacoma Art Museum, Between Clouds of Memory: The Ceramic Art of Akio Takamori, which ran from June 10 through October 8, 2006.

Curated by Chief Curator Elizabeth Brown. Generously supported by ArtsFund, PONCHO, and the Mayor's Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, City of Seattle.

steve roden: day ring, night ring
SKYSPACE, PLAZA, ELEVATOR, and LOBBY
August 25 – November 12, 2006

Steve Roden. day ring Sketch 1. 2006. Collage and pencil on paper.
Courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetter LA Projects.

Los Angeles artist Steve Roden created a pair of sound art compositions in response to James Turrell's Skyspace at the Henry. These works were part of a series of new work activating the spare forms of specific modern architectural structures with audio tracks composed of music and recorded sounds. day ring offered a durational listening experience at specific times during the museum's regular hours. night ring presented a continuous soundscape for the area near the Skyspace at night. Quietly unfolding over several minutes, Roden's work strives for a moment where visual, spatial, and aural perceptions become mutually enriching, deepening the experience of all three phenomena simultaneously.

Also on view were two recent videos by Roden. four words for four hands (apple.mountain.over.frozen) is a silent, vibrantly colorful meditation on the system of transcribing musical notes, by which the analytical process of reading music becomes a sensual visual experience. anything else &/or nothing at all (drawing circles for jackson mac low) layers Roden's graphic translation of a fluxus composer's score atop a 1950s art instruction film.

steve roden: day ring, night ring was curated by Associate Curator Sara Krajewski and generously supported by ArtsFund.

75 at 75
EAST GALLERY
September 22 –October 29, 2006

Cindy Sherman. Untitled #228. 1990. Chromogenic (Ektacolor) print.
Henry Art Gallery, Joseph and Elaine Monsen Photography Collection,
gift of Joseph and Elaine Monsen and The Boeing Company.
Courtesy of the artist and Metro Pictures.

For his 75th birthday year, the Henry honored the collecting endeavors of Joseph Monsen with a selection of the collector's 75 favorite photographs. Dr. Monsen has collected the broadest array of photographs spanning the medium's history. On view were images by photography's pioneers including William Henry Fox Talbot and Gustave Le Grey, the groundbreaking work of Man Ray and Herbert Bayer, innovations by Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, and William Eggleston, right up to late twentieth-century masterpieces by Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Cindy Sherman.

Photographs selected by Joseph Monsen. Exhibition coordinated by Chief Curator Elizabeth Brown and Associate Curator Sara Krajewski.

The Biographical Landscape: The Photography of Stephen Shore, 1968 – 1993
NORTH GALLERIES
October 7 – December 31, 2006

Stephen Shore. Merced River, Yosemite National Park, California, August 13, 1979. 1979.
Digital C-print. Courtesy of the artist and Aperture Foundation.

The Biographical Landscape: The Photography of Stephen Shore, 1968–1993 presents approximately 120 rarely-exhibited color prints and photographic projects of one of the most influential American photographers. The exhibition comprises works from Stephen Shore's key series, American Surfaces and Uncommon Places, as well as his later landscape photographs. At the heart of the exhibition is Uncommon Places, Shore's quintessential series on the American vernacular landscape photographed between 1973 and 1982. Many of the works on view have never before been exhibited in the U.S., including original prints, objects from Shore's earlier conceptual projects, and his obsessive daily logs from 1973. The Biographical Landscape illuminates the evolution of Shore's influential work and gives a full picture of Shore's articulate and groundbreaking use of large format photography as well as his great contribution to photography in the late 20th century.

The Biographical Landscape: The Photography of Stephen Shore, 1968-1993 was curated by Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen for Aperture Foundation, a not-for-profit organization devoted to photography and the visual arts. Presentation at the Henry Art Gallery was organized by Chief Curator Elizabeth Brown.

Beyond Territory
neuroTransmitter
NORTH GALLERIES
November 10 – December 31, 2006

neuroTransmitter. 12 Miles Out. 2005.
Wire, radio, and radio transmitter. Courtesy of the artists.

The collaborative artist group neuroTransmitter works specifically with radio machinations to investigate the history, technology, and uses of the medium. At the Henry, neuroTransmitter presented two multimedia installations exploring pirate radio stations of the past. By reflecting on the means and aims of such rebellious activity, neuroTransmitter raised questions about the corporate and governmental control of radio and how radio might be reclaimed as a tool for protest and social advancement.

Curated by Associate Curator Sara Krajewski and generously supported by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and ArtsFund. In-kind support provided by Hotel Max and Hogue Cellars.

(We Decided To Let Them Say "We Are Convinced" Twice.  It was More Convincing This Way.) A project by Walid Raad
EAST GALLERY
November 10 – February 4, 2007

Walid Raad. Untitled and/or artillery I. 2005. Chromogenic print.
Courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York.

Walid Raad works with video, photography, and literary essays to investigate the contemporary history of war in his native Lebanon.  (We Decided To Let Them Say "We Are Convinced" Twice.  It Was More Convincing This Way.), a series of 15 large-scale photographs, specifically recalls the Israeli Army's invasion and siege of Beirut in 1982. That summer Raad, an intrepid 15-year-old with a telephoto lens, took photographs of near and distant military activity in West Beirut from his home in the eastern sector. Recently reprinting the pictures from the original, now degraded negatives, he discovered that the images' unusual discoloration, creases, and holes offered a disturbing but realistic representation of a broken world rendered flat by the series of catastrophes that had befallen it.

Curated by Associate Curator Sara Krajewski and generously supported by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, ArtsFund, and Paula Cooper Gallery. In-kind support provided by Hotel Max and Hogue Cellars.