Albin O. Kuhn, Homer Schamp, and Guy Chisholm On-Site 1965
September 15 – December 16, 2016
All of the forces that contributed to making UMBC– from emerging as a need triggered by the post-World War II baby boom to becoming a higher education ideal conceptualized by Chancellor Albin O. Kuhn– converged on September 19, 1966, with the commencement of the first classes. This exhibition tells some of the many stories of the university’s exciting beginning and continuing development through items selected from UMBC’s University Archives including photographs, documents, objects, books and ephemera.
This exhibition tells some of the many stories of the university’s exciting beginning and continuing development through items selected from UMBC’s University Archives including photographs, documents, objects, books and ephemera.
Public Program
Monday, 3:30 p.m.
September 19, 2016
Exhibition Tour: Chief Curator Tom Beck & Archivist Lindsey Loeper
UMBC Rathskeller By Photo Service UMCP, 1971
Places where students could socialize were limited during the early years of the campus. One popular location in 1971 was the Rathskeller, which was located in the basement of Hillcrest Building. The Ratt, as it was affectionately nicknamed, was a popular location that served alcohol on campus, since the minimum age for drinking beer and wine in Maryland was then 18.
Pioneering African-American Studies Faculty Members By William Boyd Photograph, 1973
Baltimore Manual Labor School Orchards ca. 1900 Photograph, printed ca. 1984
Chess Master Larry Kaufman By William “Skip” Boyd September 20, 1972
The Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents The Glass Knife, curated by artists Stephen Bradley and Kathy Marmor, on display April 25 through June 30. The exhibition reflects on the work of Keith Porter, known as the “father of cell biology,” the title referring to the sharp wedged-shaped glass tool used by Porter to prepare tissue samples. Dr. Keith Porter was the chair of the UMBC Department of Biology from 1984 to 1988, and was one of the first scientists to study whole cells with the electron microscope. At the RockefellerInstitute, he produced the first image of an intact cell, made possible by his development of an innovative slicing technique and specimen preparation for viewing and photographing with the electron microscope. His in-depth experience in experimental embryology and histology, along with his talent to interpret these highly magnified images, enabled him to infer the functional activities of cell organelles such as the endoplasmic reticulum (which he discovered and named)and microtubules. Porter was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1977.
Public Program
4:00 p.m.
Monday, May 2, 2016
Artist’s Talk:Stephen Bradley and Kathy Marmor
Media artists Bradley and Marmor have structured their installation to illuminate Keith Porter’s life-long relationship with the micro world of cells. The Glass Knife integrates select elements from Porter’s archive to build a unified series of sculptures that allude to Porter’s workstation that “sees” the cell and its organelles and the potential applications that Porter imagined. With The Glass Knife, Bradley and Marmor propose a model of imagination that embraces a vision mediated by technology that extends our seeing. The artists as curators offer metaphoric insight into Porter’s scientific inquiry made possible with his ground-breaking use of the electron microscope that changed the world of cellular science. “He had an almost uncanny ability to look at static electron monographs of cells and ‘see’ what the cell was doing, or at least what it was equipped to do.” – Dr. Lee D. Peachey
Audio
Sound composition created from recoding the electromagnetic signals emitted by an operational electron microscope that Keith Porter used while he was at UMBC in the 1980s. Presented as a multi-channel sound installation in the Glass Knife, comprised of 3 DIY parabolic speakers, mp3 players, amplifier.
Coast Splash Zone Yenna Gap A mosaic produced at Yenna Gap of the tannin-rich waters of the spalsh zone and bog.
February 8 – March 31, 2016
The inter-media exhibition Sounding Botany Bay presents documentary photographs, audio compositions, and videos of Botany Bay – one of Australia’s most significant cultural and natural sites – made by artist and 2006 Fullbright Senior Scholar, Timothy Nohe. The rich voices, sounds, and sights of the bay are blended into an aural and visual landscape that heightens and contrasts what is and has been, so that the visitor may experience the past and contemporary complexity of Botany Bay while reflecting on its future, and that of other shifting landscapes around the globe, near and far.
Audio
Clapping In Maria Nugent
Tangled Pipes
Oyster Depot
This 2009 image reflects a significant reimagining of the national park at Kurnell to view the site as the meeting place between two cultures, that of the indigenous people of the bay and the mission of Cook. Under the management of National Parks and Wildlife Service, historian Dr. Maria Nugent, and Aboriginal elders much design and interpretation work was done to balance the Aboriginal and European historical and cultural interpretation of the place. This is evidenced in the renaming of the park as Kamay Botany Bay National Park and transforming the longstanding Commemoration Day ceremony as the Meeting of Cultures ceremony. Over the course of the documentary, and continuing now Aboriginal people are integral to planning, stewardship and interpretation of this site with a fraught history.
Man from the La Perouse community holding an Eastern Fiddler Ray after a storm. Image made during the repatriation of aboriginal remains at a place of safe-keeping, Towra.
Public Program
4:00 p.m. Tuesday
February 16, 2016
Artist’s Talk: Timothy Nohe
Timothy Nohe is an artist and educator engaging traditional and electronic media in daily life and public places. His artwork has been focused on sustainability and place, intermedia works, and sound scores for dance and video. Nohe was the recipient of a 2006 Fulbright Senior Scholar Award from the Australian-American Fulbright Commission Fulbright Alumni InitiativeGrant in 2011. Four Maryland State Arts Council awards have supported his work in the area of music Composition, Non-Classical; Media; New Genre, and Installation/Sculpture. Nohe has also been recognized with a Creative Baltimore Award. In 2015 the Warnock Foundation recognized his interdisciplinary work in urban forests with a Social Innovator award. He is the founding director of the Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA) and a tenured professor of Visual Arts at UMBC. Nohe has strong ties to Australia, where he serves as an adjunct Professor at La Trobe University, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences; as an artist in Residence at the Centre for Creative Arts at La Trobe University, and on the editorial board of the peer-reviewed journal Unlikely, based in Melbourne.
The presentation of this exhibition at UMBC is supported in part by an arts program grant fromthe Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the NationalEndowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from Friends of the Library & Gallery, theLibby Kuhn Endowment, the Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA),the Dresher Center for the Humanities and individual contributors.Support for the ongoing artistic research project Sounding Botany Bay comes from theAustralian-American Fulbright Commission, and the University of Wollongong.
They fight with cameras Photograph by Walter Rosenblum Normandy, France June 27, 1944
So that all the world might have a photographic record of the invasion, these men, Signal Corps combat photographers, risk their lives on the front — their only weapons, a camera and a lot of nerve.
Collection of Rosenblum Photography Archive
August 26 – December 16, 2015
When the United States entered into World War II, it was with a sense of moral duty that many men entered the fight; Walter Rosenblum (1919-2006) was one of them. As a U.S. Army combat photographer Rosenblum landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day, then traveled throughout Europe with various combat units. Documenting the war under extremely dangerous conditions, he secured the surrender of 75 German troops, was wounded in combat, and took some of the first motion picture footage of the liberation of the Dachau concentration camp. Rosenblum was one of the most decorated WWII photographers, awarded the Silver Star, Bronze Star, five battle stars, the Purple Heart, and a Presidential Unit Citation.
Curated by Manuela Fugenzi, produced by Studio Zizola, Rome, and Daedalus Productions, Inc., New York.
Army medics evacuating a casualty Photograph by Walter Rosenblum St. Lo, France July 20, 1944
Collection of Rosenblum Photography Archive
Omaha Beach rescue Photograph by Walter Rosenblum Normandy, France June 7, 1944
Collection of Rosenblum Photography Archive
War Photographers Press Pass of Walter Rosenblum January 19, 1945
Collection of Rosenblum Photography Archive
Public Programs
12:00 noon Film Screening Walter Rosenblum: In Search of Pitt Street
6:00 p.m. Talk Nina Rosenblum Film Producer, Daedalus Productions, Inc.
The work of Abbott Miller merges graphic design and typography with spatial design, interactive media, and curatorial projects. Through design and art direction as well as writing and curating, Miller’s work embraces exhibitions, digital media, environmental graphics, textiles, identities and publication design. Trained as an artist and designer, Miller’s projects reflect his interests in art, performance, photography, fashion, architecture, and history. This exhibition is based on his recently published monograph “Abbott Miller: Design and Content” (Princeton Architectural Press, 2014). The book argues that designers inhabit a critical space between form and content. Miller sees the role of the designer as a performer and interpreter, using words and images to dramatically stage content. He has collaborated with renowned artists, performers, and curators to create publications, digital media, and exhibitions that dramatically embody their content. He has also written extensively on design and the role of the designer as an author and editor, a figure who mediates and shapes narrative environments, whether in the space of a book or an exhibition.
Public Program
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Artist’s Talk: Abbott Miller
Abbott Miller is a partner in the New York City office of the international design studioPentagram. Since 2000 he has also maintained a satellite studio in Baltimore, where he also serves as a Visiting Artist in the MFA Graphic Design program at Maryland Institute College of Art. He is the author and editor of several books on design, including Design Writing Research: Writing on Graphic Design, co-authored with Ellen Lupton. In 2014 Miller was awarded the AIGAMedal, his profession’s highest honor. His work has won numerous awards and is in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cooper Hewitt Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Bibliotheques National de Paris.
The history of American slavery is considered in A Stirring Song Sung Heroic, an exhibition of 80 black and white silver gelatin prints by photographer William Earle Williams. These images document mostly anonymous, unheralded, and uncelebrated places in the New World – from the Caribbean to North America – where Americans black and white determined the meaning of freedom. Archives of prints, newspapers, and other ephemera related to the struggle accompany the work. The presentation of this exhibition marks the 150th anniversary of the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which abolished slavery nationwide following the conclusion of the American Civil War.
William Earle Williams is the Audrey and John L. Dusseau Professor in the Humanities, Professor of Fine Arts, and Curator of Photography at Haverford College. He received his M.F.A. degree from Yale University School of Art and holds a B.A. in history from Hamilton College. His photographs have been widely exhibited at diverse institutions including the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, and UMBC. His work is held in many public collections including the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and UMBC’s Special Collections. Williams has also received numerous fellowships from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship for 2003 – 2004.
Coffin House, 2001
Spencer Grave, 2006
Public Program
4:00 p.m. Tuesday, February 24, 2015
Artist’s Talk: William Earle Williams
The lecture, co-sponsored by the Dresher Center the Humanities and the Library Gallery, will be presented as part of the Humanities Forum.
Victoria Sambunaris Untitled (Uranium tailings, Mexican Hat, Utah), 2005 Chromogenic Print Courtesy of the artist
August 27 – December 17, 2014
Victoria Sambunaris received her MFA from Yale University in 1999. Each year, she structures her life around a photographic journey crossing the American landscape. Her most recent project has been working in South Texas photographing the intersection of geology, industry, and culture encompassing the international boundary and energy industry. She is a recipient of the 2010 Aaron Siskind Foundation Individual Photographer’s Fellowship and the 2010Anonymous Was a Woman Award. Her work is held in the collections of the Museum of ModernArt, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, the National Gallery of Art, the San Francisco Museum of modern Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and the Lannan Foundation. Radius Books published her first monograph in April 2014.
Victoria Sambunaris has traversed and documented the vast United States landscape for more than a decade, viewing the intersection of geology, industry, and culture, as both a record and a metaphor for the American experience.
In Taxonomy of a Landscape, forty-one of the artist’s large-scale photographs reveal the mystery and unease of a country where human intervention and natural beauty inspire wonder in equal measure, while additional materials – video, books, maps, mineral specimens, journals, road logs, and photographic sketches – provide an intimate view of the artist’s life and work on the road.
Untitled (Potash Mine – distant view, Wendover, Utah), 2004 Chromogenic Print Courtesy of the artist
Untitled (Santa Elena Canyon, Big Bend National Park, Texas), 2010 Chromogenic Print Courtesy of the artist
Untitled (Alaskan pipeline at Atigun Pass, Brooks Range, Alaska), 2003 Chromogenic Print Courtesy of the artist
Untitled (Distant steam vents, Yellowstone), 2008 Chromogenic Print Courtesy of the artist
Untitled (Red containers, wet ground, Fort Worth, Texas), 2000 Chromogenic Print Courtesy of the artist
Untitled (Warehouse with sand, El Paso, Texas), 2002 Chromogenic Print Courtesy of the artist
Public Program
4:00 p.m. Wednesday
October 8, 2014
Artist’s Talk: Victoria Sambunaris
Installation Views
The exhibition Victoria Sambunaris: Taxonomy of a Landscape originated at the Albright-KnoxArt Gallery in Buffalo, New York and was organized by Christie Mazuera Davis, ProgramDirector, Contemporary Art and Public Programs at the Lannan Foundation, and Albright-KnoxCurator for the Collection Holly E. Hughes. The Museum of Contemporary Photography atColumbia College Chicago’s presentation and subsequent tour of Victoria Sambunaris: Taxonomy of a Landscape has been generously supported by the Lannan Foundation, SantaFe, New Mexico.
The presentation of Victoria Sambunaris: Taxonomy of a Landscape at UMBC is supported in part by an arts program grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Lannan Foundation, Friends of the Library & Gallery, the Libby Kuhn Endowment, and individual contributors.
Melissa Smedley Water…Or How The West Was Won, 2003 Three page book with accompanying letter, mixed media
April 7 – May 31, 2014
Eugenia P. Butler was a Los Angeles-based artist who played a formative but often overlooked role in Conceptual art where she regularly challenged people to explore how they perceive their “reality.” Butler’s Book of Lies project began in 1991 and examined how other artists use “the lie to explore our relationship with the truth.” Known for her collaborations and interactions with other artists, Butler held three artist dinners where she asked her guests to consider the questions, “What is the lie with which I am most complicit” and “What is the truth that most feeds my life?”
Conceived of as a global conversation about truth and lies held through the medium of works of art and poetry, Butler invited artists to use the lie to explore our relationship with the truth. Book of Lies examines the lie as a human strategy using examples drawn from life situations including childhood, love, and war. Seventy-eight artists responded to these questions in unique and provocative ways, resulting in a body of work curated by Butler and Corazon del Sol titled Book of Lies.
Book of Lies is curated by Corazon del Sol and circulated by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions, Pasadena, California.
James Cobb The Big Lie: The Spider and the Fly, 2003 Linocut
Benji Whalen Rude Constellations, 2004 Hand-embroidered constellation drawing on denim
Jenny Watson Untitled, 1997 Block print on felt
Steve DeGroodt,and Mary Rakow Music like this finds all my wounds, 2003 Text collaged paper with gold fabric veil
Eugenia Butler and Corazon delSol Where does the lie begin?, 2004 2 layer lithograph on handmade Japanese papers, gold threads and tiny mirror. Envelope made from local topographic maps
Georganne Deen Mother’s Lies, 1994 Color laserprint, text and collaged lotteria card
Public Program
6:00 pm Wednesday
April 16, 2014
Examining the Book of Lies: Truth, Lies and the Construction of Reality
Girl Learning to Skate, 1950 Livonia Avenue, East NY N. Jay Jaffee Gelatin Silver Print
January 27 – March 23, 2014
Seventy photographs–exquisite expositions of light and shadow, visual textures, and balanced tension–spanning the distinctive career of N. Jay Jaffee (1921-1999) are presented in this exhibition. From capturing the vibrancy of New York City streets to meditating on still landscapes, Jaffee’s photographs are very much a form of self-portrait, a means by which he interpreted both the world and his position in it. These thoughtful and subtly witty photographs are invitations to see, to question, and to engage fully with life.
Bryant Park, 1953 New York City N. Jay Jaffee Gelatin Silver Print
Looking at Seals, 1971 Aquarium, Coney Island, NY N. Jay Jaffee Gelatin Silver Print
Anti Vietnam Demo #1, 1974 (Printed 1977) New York City N. Jay Jaffee Gelatin Silver Print
Boots, 1950 Queens, NYC N. Jay Jaffee Gelatin Silver Print
Detail: United Methodist Church, 1994 Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD N. Jay Jaffee Gelatin Silver Print
White Star Lunch, 1995 Fredrick, Maryland N. Jay Jaffee Gelatin Silver Print
Public Program
4:00 PM, Thursday
February 27, 2014
Reception to Follow
Christy Ford Chapin, Assistant Professor of History, will shed light on the historical context in which Jaffee was active as a photographer, with emphasis on the Cold War, McCarthyism, and the dramatic changes that occurred from the late 1940s through the 1990s. Tom Beck, Chief Curator of the Albin O. Kuhn Gallery, will discuss the life and work of photographer N. Jay Jaffee including: the influence of the Photo League the only arts group that was included on the United States Attorney General’s List of Subversive Organizations in 1947; Jaffee’s longtime muse—the streets of New York City; and the increasingly poetic and personal elements that characterize his later work.
Johanna Drucker From Now, 2007 Offset with letterpress covers, saddle stitched Courtesy of the artist
September 16 – December 20, 2013
Artist, writer, typographic poet, and scholar-critic Johanna Drucker is widely known for her contributions to contemporary art theory and history, as well as her prolific output as a creative artist. Throughout her career she has helped shape the field of artists’ books, visual poetics, and digital aesthetics in dialogue with the arts and critical issues. Druckworks, a retrospective exhibition, is the first comprehensive presentation of Drucker’s books, graphic art and visual projects, and reveals key insights into the artist’s development over the course of four decades.
This exhibition is organized by the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago.
Johanna Drucker Testament of Women, 2005-6 Letterpress with linoleum cuts Courtesy of the artist
Johanna Drucker & Brad Freeman Nova Reperta, 1999 Courtesy of the artist
