Art Picks: October 2010
Posted on October 6, 2010 – 5:45 PM | by OldManFoster
Crocker Art Museum
Grand Opening: Teel Family Pavilion
October 10
The impending Grand Opening of the new 125,000 square-foot Teel Family Pavilion (and reopening of the rest of the Crocker) has all but sucked the air out of the Sacramento art scene this month. And with good reason; the $100 million expansion will more than triple the size of the museum, and is easily the most ambitious – and best – arts project ever undertaken in Sacramento. There have been private preview events for donors and supporters, but the general public’s first chance to get a peek inside the new building will be at the 10.10.10 Grand Opening celebration. The reopening kicks off with an all-day art festival, which includes the official ribbon-cutting ceremony along with performing and visual artists on multiple stages, a global arts block party with food, beer and wine, performances by regional dance troupes, bands and puppeteers, artist demonstrations, roaming street performers and living history interpreters, and much more.
Homecoming
Wayne Thiebaud
October 10 – November 28
As the title implies, this show is not the first Crocker solo show for Sacramento’s most famous artist – that would be Influences on a Young Painter, which the Crocker presented in 1961. Now, nearly six decades later, Thiebaud returns to the Crocker with a top-notch retrospective featuring 50 works spanning the entirety of his career. Organized by Thiebaud and Curator Scott Shields, and drawn in part from the traveling exhibition Wayne Thiebaud: 70 Years of Painting, the exhibition will include many works not previously displayed, with special attention given to Sacramento places and personalities. Thiebaud was a major figure in the Pop Art movement, and the influence of his work can hardly be overstated – especially locally. With wit, a virtuoso handling of paint and color, and an impeccable sense of composition, Thiebaud created many paintings that are nothing less than 20th century masterpieces, several of which will be in the show.
A Pioneering Collection
Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum
October 10 – February 6, 2011
The Crocker holds one of the finest early collections of master drawings in the United States, purchased for the most part in 1869–71 by E. B. and Margaret Crocker. A Pioneering Collection explores the beauty, quality and scholarly importance of the collection with 56 drawings, including works by Albrecht Dürer, Fra Bartolommeo, Anthonie van Dyck and Jean-Honoré Fragonard. The exhibit also features recent acquisitions and new discoveries. A Pioneering Collection opens in conjunction with the Museum’s new Anne and Malcolm McHenry Works on Paper Study Center, and was organized by Crocker curator William Breazeale, who is the lead author for the exhibition catalogue. The exhibition features many notable works, including Dürer’s Female Nude with a Staff, drawn by the greatest German artist of the Renaissance in 1498, soon after his return from Italy, The Actor Brochard in Costume, one of the earliest surviving portraits by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and many more. – From the Crocker
Tomorrow’s Legacies
Gifts Celebrating the Next 125 Years
October 10 – January 9, 2011
While a museum’s architecture may be an important part of its appeal, it is an institution’s collection that is its heart. And at the heart of any museum’s collection are its donors. The Crocker collection (as noted above) began with a bequest of E.B. and Margaret Crocker’s personal art collection. Their tastes dominated the Crocker’s legacy for at least the next century, and only lately have more recent gifts begun to shape the museum’s personality. Tomorrow’s Legacies features an exciting ‘preview’ of 125 gifts that have been promised to the Crocker by collectors and art enthusiasts throughout California and across the United States. These promised donations include art by a wide variety of artists, from ancient Chinese earthenware (Courtiers on Horseback, sculptural earthenware from the Tang Dynasty) to photography (Robert Mapplethorpe’s Tulips in a Box, 1983) to modern art (Amedeo Modigliani, Nude, undated), and all will one day become part of the Crocker’s personal collection.
Homecoming
Gregory Kondos Gallery
Through October 22
The list of artists who studied and/or taught at the Sac City art department at some point in their careers reads like a Who’s Who of regional art stars. Wayne Thiebaud and Greg Kondos are the most obvious names, but nearly every other local artist of note has had a connection to Sac City at some point. Homecoming, the current show at the college’s Gregory Kondos Gallery, features work from a selection of alumni including Julia Couzens, Fred Dalkey, Gary Dinnen, Kurt Fishback, Darrell Forney, Andries Fourie, Gregory Kondos, Jack Ogden, Jerald Silva and about a dozen more.
Sacramento City College, 3835 Freeport
Hours: Noon – 4PM, Mon – Fri, and by appt (916) 650-2942
Chris Daubert
Paintings
B. Sakata Garo
October 5 -30
Reception: October 9, 6 – 9PM
Transfiguration: An Electronic Audio and Visual Installation
Blue Line Gallery
October 16 – January 8, 2011
Reception: October 16, 6 – 9PM
Lecture: Oct. 28, 7 – 9PM
Between the Crocker’s Grand Opening and Daubert’s TWO solo shows it’s like someone declared it ‘Chris Daubert – Crocker Month’ in Sacramento. Daubert’s mammoth Travelers Among Buildings and Streams installation made a huge splash when it debuted in 2005 (the Bee’s Victoria Dalkey called it “the most amazing installation to be mounted in Sacramento”), and the bay area refugee turned local art instructor hasn’t seemed to have rested since. The two shows opening this month present two very different sides of a complex artist: paintings inspired by the stone walls of ancient Mexican temples at Sakata Garo, and a complex electronic installation also inspired by ancient Mexican temples at the Blue Line. And there’s a real irony here, too… before Travelers, Daubert rarely showed in town at all! I’ve only seen snatches of Daubert’s paintings (and those online, not in person) so I’ll be very curious to see the work in person to find out what an artist best known for his electronic gadgetry does with brushes and paint. If Transfiguration is anything like Daubert’s other motion-activated work (I’m thinking of his installation at Davis’ Pence Gallery from a couple of years ago) it will be not for the faint-of-high-concept heart, and a listen to Daubert’s lecture on October 28 may really help inform the work.
B. Sakata Garo, 923 Twentieth Street
Hours: Tues – Sat, Noon – 6PM
Blue Line: 405 Vernon Street, Ste 100, Roseville
Hours: Tues – Sat, 10AM – 5PM
Short List
The Church Series
A Project by Fred Dalkey
Center for Contemporary Art Sacramento
Through October 23
Longtime Sac City art teacher Fred Dalkey made 54 paintings of the same simple still life over the course of a year. The result is a series of paintings that shows off the confident impressionistic brushwork that has made Dalkey one of the region’s best-loved artists.
1519 19th Street
Tags: 2010, Art, B Sakata Garo, Blue Line Gallery, Center for Contemporary Art Sacramento, Chris Daubert, Church Series. CCAS, Crocker Art Museum, Fred Dalkey, Gregory Kondos Gallery, Homecoming, New, Teel Family Pavilion, Tomorrow's Legacies, Wayne Thiebaud