Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art
Curated by Stephanie Smith, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago
The DeVos Art Museum is pleased to present Beyond Green, which will be shown in both galleries in the museum this winter and spring. The DeVos Art Museum is the final stop on the tour of this exhibition, having made stops at the Museum of Arts & Design, New York, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati and the Hoffman Gallery at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, among others.
Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art explores the ways that sustainable design philosophy resonates with the work of an emerging generation of international artists hailing from cities including Brooklyn, Chicago, Copenhagen, London, San Francisco, San Juan, and Vienna. The artists combine a fresh aesthetic sensibility with a constructively critical approach to the production, dissemination, and display of art. They embed environmental concerns within larger ethical and aesthetic explorations; they are building paths to new forms of practice that go beyond green.
Beyond Green: Toward a Sustainable Art is co-organized by the David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, and by iCI (Independent Curators International), New York, and circulated by iCI. The exhibition is curated by Stephanie Smith. The exhibition and accompanying catalogue are made possible in part by the Smart Family Foundation; the Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation; the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation; and iCI Exhibition Partners Kenneth S. Kuchin and F. Bruce Anderson, and Gerrit and Sydie Lansing. Additional support is provided by the Arts Planning Council, the Environmental Studies Program, and the Green Campus Initiative University of Chicago.
Hourly Schedule
Events
- Thursday, January 22, 6-8pm
- Beyond Green Exhibition Opening
- Featuring live music by The Chanteymen Listen to live music on recyled hybrid instruments and see the result of the People Powered recycling paint project; take home a free quart of community colored paint!
- Friday, January 30, 2:00pm
- Visiting Artist Presentation: Material Exchange
- Art and Design Lecture Hall, Room 165 Material Exchange, a Chicago-based artist collaborative, uses often-discarded objects and materials in projects to create new and useful items. This presentation ends a five-day residency in which the artists (Sara Black and John Preus) will lead a workshop with NMU students and local high school students to solve a design problem for the Superior Waterhsed Partnership using reused materials. They will be creating a public art piece that will also function as a fish habitat. The finished piece will be sited on a frozen lake, which will then sink to bottom of the lake when the ice melts.
- Thursday, February 5, 6:00pm
- Visiting Artist Presentation
- Mead Auditorium, West Science Room 2701 Paul Wittenbraker is an artist and faculty member in the Department of Art and Design at Grand Valley State University (GVSU). In 1999, Wittenbraker started the Civic Studio Project at GVSU as a course in public art. Civic Studio establishes a temporary studio each semester, allowing students to interact with, make art about and volunteer in the Grand Rapids community. Paul will be leading a workshop during the day involving the NMU and Marquette communities that will address how the two groups can benefit each other.
Speakers:
Paul Wittenbraker
- Friday, February 20, 2:00pm
- Visiting Artist Presentation
- Art and Design Lecture Hall, Room 165 As Creative Director, Steve Frykholm has been largely responsible for furniture icon Herman Miller Inc.'s image and graphic identity for the past 35 years. Herman Miller, Inc. hired Frykholm to be its first internal graphic designer soon after he graduated from Cranbrook Academy of Art. Frykholm has witnessed the company embracing “green” design methods and will comment on how this shift to sustainable business practices has affected him as a designer.
Speakers:
Steve Frykholm
- Sunday, March 1, 12-5pm
- Beyond Green Family Day
- Get out of the winter blues and embrace green! The first ever famiy day at the museum will give parents and children of all ages the chance to be inspired by the enviornment. Museum docents will lead tours of the exhibition and related art activities. Art projects are designed for children ages six and up and all children must be accompanied by a parent. No registration is required; drop in anytime!
- Monday, March 9, 6:00pm
- Visiting Artist Presentation
- Mead Auditorium, West Science Room 2701 For over two decades, John Ganis has photographed the environmental impact of overdevelopment and resource exploitation, creating a body of work that was published in 2003 as a monograph titled Consuming the American Landscape. Using straight color photographs in a way that is descriptive yet somewhat poetic, Ganis provokes a process of inquiry and concern in the viewer.
Speakers:
John Ganis
