SCAD Museum of Art celebrates 10 years
In honor of its milestone anniversary, the museum welcomes renowned international artists for a diverse program of exhibitions and events.
SAVANNAH, GEORGIA — The Savannah College of Art and Design is proud to announce the 10-year anniversary of the SCAD Museum of Art. For the past decade, the award-winning museum has brought together more than 200 international established and emerging artists to exhibit, perform, and converse. As a center for cultural dialogue, the museum continues to enrich the high caliber of education and cultural life for students, alumni, the Savannah community, and beyond. Throughout the 2021-2022 academic year, SCAD will celebrate this legacy with dynamic new programming and artist engagements, while also highlighting monumental past exhibitions and performances.
For the Fall 2021 exhibition season, the SCAD Museum of Art will showcase work by a diverse roster of artists from Colombia, France, Japan, Mexico, Spain, and the U.S., whose practices reflect the most relevant conversations within contemporary art discourse. More than 10 of SCAD’s top-ranked degree programs are represented in the fall exhibitions including architecture, fashion, film and television, graphic design, illustration, interactive design and game development, jewelry, painting, photography, sculpture, and user experience (UX) design.
“The SCAD Museum of Art celebrates a momentous milestone — 10 years! — with a fall lineup of luminaries from around the globe. Hein Koh’s anthropomorphic artistry stirs the senses, Izumi Kato’s curious creatures intrigue and enthrall, and Ira Lombardía’s visual ecology explores and elucidates ephemerality. From living legends like Robert Wilson to dauntless documentarians like SCAD alum Arturo Soto, the world’s finest teaching museum’s fall exhibitions enlighten, enliven, and enchant.”
Paula Wallace
SCAD President and Founder
Featured fall solo exhibitions at the university’s award-winning SCAD Museum of Art in Savannah include:
MEHRYL LEVISSE: WHITE WIG (FRANCE)
On view through Dec. 12, 2021
In White Wig, Mehryl Levisse swathes the SCAD MOA lobby in a monochromatic pink wallpaper. Mounted on this opulent pattern are paintings, selected by the artist, from the museum’s Earle W. Newton Collection of British and American Portraiture featuring prominent individuals of the 18th century. Placing these portraits within a taxonomy of symbols of performative gender, Levisse examines the use of hairstyle and dress as markers of status and identity that have been historically separated into the strict binary of man and woman. Within this immersive staging, sculpted wigs created by five Parisian drag entertainers are displayed on a velour-clad pedestal. The wigs function in dialogue with the portraits, contrasting the historic symbolism of the white wig in English society and courts.
ARTURO SOTO: URBAN VISIONS (MEXICO)
On view through Dec. 19, 2021
Through a rigorous photographic practice that spans academic and urban environments, Arturo Soto (SCAD B.F.A., film and television, 2005) investigates the narratives and counternarratives of cities. Urban Visions, Soto’s first museum exhibition in the U.S., includes more than 30 photographs by the artist that create through-lines between site, theory, and image, a dialogue ever-present in Soto’s works. The exhibition presents an array of works from three photographic series: All Lovely Things Will Have an Ending (2006) from his time as a SCAD student, inspired by the titular, popular poem by Savannah writer Conrad Aiken; Circling the Square (2013–14), a series made in London and inspired by the Situationist concept of psychogeography, or “a way to delve into the soul of a city”; and A Certain Logic of Expectations (2016–20), a series created in the British city of Oxford that depicts the looming presence of Brexit, the conflicted local economy, and the diversity of the city’s neighborhoods.
HEIN KOH: HOPE & SORROW (U.S.)
On view through Jan. 2, 2022
In Hope & Sorrow, Brooklyn-based artist Hein Koh harnesses the wide-eyed imagination of the human mind to activate the rich psychological lives of the more-than-human world. The site-specific installation, Koh’s first solo museum exhibition, unites every aspect of her interdisciplinary practice for the first time, transforming the museum’s exterior-facing Jewel Boxes into dreamy surrealist gardens of larger-than-life soft sculpture made from metallic spandex, velvet, and satin, set against oil-painted backdrops and Astroturf. Koh’s anthropomorphic landscapes — crying flowers, watchful suns — communicate complex emotional narratives full of wonder, pain, melancholy, and joy.
ROBERT WILSON: A BOY FROM TEXAS (U.S.)
Sept. 21–Dec. 26, 2021
Renowned for his masterful use of light in theatrical productions across the world’s most important theaters, Robert Wilson has often cited the expansive horizons of the Texas landscape as a source of inspiration for his stage environments. Drawing inspiration from his childhood memories of hunting trips with his father, Wilson thinks about the mind space in which he entered as a boy, while being silent waiting for deer to appear. Even though he had no interest in guns or hunting, these encounters became a meditative approximation of the sublime for Wilson. A Boy From Texas is a multimedia experience that offers a powerful vignette of Wilson’s profound connection to landscape. Installed in the museum’s experimental gallery, the show presents an immersive dark space with shimmering cast truncated pyramids and hand-blown deer exquisitely fabricated by Corning Glass. The fragility of the translucent deer stands in counterpoint to the ancient geometry and seemingly infinite depth of the pyramids. This tension sustains them, like the sole inhabitants of an endless landscape, as a site of rebirth and renewal.
IZUMI KATO: STAND BY YOU (JAPAN)
Sept. 21, 2021–Jan. 16, 2022
In Stand By You, Japanese artist Izumi Kato invites viewers into his uncanny world, populated by spectral figures that inhabit the liminal space between the physical realm and the territory of spirits. These creatures, with bulbous heads and slim, graceful bodies, recall the anatomy of embryos, children, or alien forms. At once charming, haunting, and humorous, they tower over viewers or hide discreetly in corners — solitary beings brought together in communion through careful and considered placement within the gallery.
IRA LOMBARDÍA: VOID (SPAIN)
Sept. 23, 2021–Jan. 2, 2022
Interested in the theoretical and practical implications of digital visual culture, interdisciplinary artist Ira Lombardía investigates how images affect and define our understanding of art today, questioning modes of production, distribution, and consumption. Lombardía defines herself as a “visual ecologist” who appropriates images to construct new meanings, identify connections, and reveal conflicts and contradictions. With VOID, the artist’s first solo U.S. museum exhibition, Lombardía deepens her long-standing investigation into ephemerality and the dematerialization of the object, premiering a new experiential sculpture that marks a significant expansion of her artistic process.
CHRISTIAN SIRIANO: PEOPLE ARE PEOPLE (U.S.)
Sept. 24, 2021–Jan. 30, 2022
People Are People, famed American designer Christian Siriano’s first solo museum exhibition, honors the undisputed industry leader’s electrifying contributions to fashion. Drawn from Siriano’s extensive archive, the exhibition features bold creations from his decade-plus career that celebrate self-expression for every body at every age. Since launching his fashion house in New York in 2008, Siriano has become beloved for statement-making looks, combining beautiful craftsmanship with a unique point of view that has endeared him to the fashion industry, celebrities, and the public alike. From glamorous gowns to gender-defying showstoppers, Siriano’s creations have been the focus of unforgettable Fashion Weeks and red-carpet moments, and worn by the world’s biggest stars, top models, pop icons, legendary divas, LGBTQ heroes, first ladies, and more.
NOHEMÍ PÉREZ: THE FOREST’S BEDDING (EL LECHO DEL BOSQUE) (COLOMBIA)
Oct. 7, 2021–Jan. 2, 2022
With her intimate painterly style of an epic dimension, Nohemí Pérez depicts scenes that problematize the social and political issues of our time related to the natural world. In The Forest’s Bedding (El lecho del bosque), Pérez presents all new, large-scale works, specifically commissioned by SCAD MOA, in which she continues her exploration of what she calls “subjects at risk” or, in other words, endangered species. Magnificent tree specimens — drawn in charcoal and painted with astonishing dexterity on large, raw canvases — establish a dialogue with minuscule, almost imperceptible figures of birds, dogs, and human bodies brought to the fertile forests in her home country of Colombia by historic and current colonialism and armed conflicts. In this immersive experience of an epic dimension, Pérez raises awareness of the complex relations between humans and nature in this territory, with hope for more sustainable and harmonious ways to coexist.
PATRICK DOUGHERTY: STICKWORK (U.S.)
Oct. 22, 2021–Oct. 22, 2022
Combining his carpentry skills and his love for nature, Patrick Dougherty uses vernacular building techniques and tree saplings to create immersive, otherworldly site-specific sculptures that twist, tower, bend, coil, and soar. Merging art, craftsmanship, and design, they attest to the wonder and awe-inspiring power of the natural world. Dougherty has honed his method of bending and weaving sticks across more than three decades. As an environmentally engaged artist, he uses only natural resources and renewable materials, yielding temporary works, as exposure to the elements wears down the installations over time. Despite — or perhaps due to — their ephemerality, Dougherty’s whimsical creations are playful invitations that enliven our human desire to dream and imagine. Dougherty will work on-site for three weeks in October with SCAD students and staff, using hundreds of sticks and saplings to create his site-specific installation, commissioned on the occasion of SCAD MOA’s 10th anniversary.
The SCAD Museum of Art will also host two group exhibitions during the Fall 2021 season:
ELIZABETH CATLETT: POINTS OF CONTACT
Sept. 16, 2021–Jan. 30, 2022
Presented in SCAD MOA’s Evans Center for African American Studies, Elizabeth Catlett: Points of Contact is a long overdue exploration of the artist’s profound influence on artistic practice today. The group exhibition brings to view key prints and sculptures by Catlett (1915–2012) — a citizen of both the U.S. and Mexico — in conversation with contemporary works by living artists from both countries. In showcasing the work of contemporary Black American and Mexican artists with strong connections — sometimes direct references — to Catlett’s work, the exhibition demonstrates how the artist’s influences, concerns, and questions are very much alive in global contemporary culture and artistic practice, and highlights the ways in which her works advocate for the dignity of all humans.
Catlett’s oeuvre is canonical yet remains a discovery for many. On view in the exhibition, the artist’s signature figurative works in various mediums, including wood-block prints, wood carvings, and bronze sculptures, depict experiences of Black Americans and Indigenous Mexican people in the 20th century with clarity and precision. At the same time, the works celebrate womanhood and the strength of women of color in public roles such as maker, laborer, educator, and civil rights activist, as well as in the domestic space and familial roles of nurturer, mother, daughter, sister, and confidant. In these portrayals, Catlett reclaims the representation of her subjects in visual culture and fearlessly speaks truth to power. The conceptual framework of the presentation builds on previous scholarship in which the complexities of Catlett’s identity have unfolded and illuminates how her work meditates on these themes as realms of political resistance.
RING REDUX: THE SUSAN GRANT LEWIN COLLECTION
On view through Jan. 30, 2022
Ring Redux: The Susan Grant Lewin Collection presents more than 100 avant-garde rings by artists who have reinvented the age-old and enduring jewelry form with a distinctively contemporary sensibility. The exhibition highlights exceptional acquisitions made across more than five decades by one of the most influential collectors of 20th- and 21st-century art jewelry. Reflecting Lewin’s openness to new artistic ideas, the collection reveals the pluralism of contemporary jewelry, resonating with aesthetic developments in art and design, craft, and technology.
The collection includes works dating from the 1950s to the present by international luminaries including Claire Falkenstein and Arline Fisch (U.S.); Wendy Ramshaw (U.K.); Bruno Martinazzi, Giampaolo Babetto, and Annamaria Zanella (Italy); Friedrich Becker, Karl Fritsch, and Daniel Kruger (Germany); Emmy van Leersum and Ted Noten (the Netherlands); Peter Skubic (Austria); Deganit Schocken (Israel); Tone Vigeland (Norway), and many more.
Placing the works into six distinctive groupings, the exhibition emphasizes subtle differences in design, material, and workmanship that underlie each artist’s improvisations on the ring form. The largest grouping is devoted to works that communicate the complexity of human relationships, from the highly personal to the universal, or suggest grotesque or dream-like apparitions, embodying rich narratives crystallized in an intimate format. The exhibition includes a major gift of 50 rings to the SCAD Museum of Art Permanent Collection as well as a corresponding catalog that is currently available at select retailers, published by SCAD University Press in partnership with arnoldsche.
For more information on the SCAD Museum of Art’s Fall 2021 exhibitions and programming, visit scadmoa.org.
SCAD Museum of Art
A premier contemporary art museum, the SCAD Museum of Art features more than 10 dynamic gallery spaces presenting exhibitions and commissioned works by international emerging and established artists. The museum serves visitors and students alike, enriching both the high caliber of education at SCAD and the cultural life of the Savannah community and beyond. Exhibitions range across mediums, complementing the artistic disciplines offered at the university. The museum also hosts public programming year-round, including lectures, gallery talks, workshops, and film screenings.
SCAD MOA has presented exhibitions by artists including AES+F, Jane Alexander, Radcliffe Bailey, Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Subodh Gupta, Alfredo Jaar, Sigalit Landau, Liza Lou, Elaine Mayes, Lorraine O’ Grady, Ebony G. Patterson, Robin Rhode, Bill Viola, Carrie Mae Weems, Kehinde Wiley, and Fred Wilson, as well as site-specific installations by Daniel Arsham, Kendall Buster, Jose Dávila, Michael Joo, Odili Donald Odita, and others.
Established in 2011, the museum’s Evans Center for African American Studies celebrates the imaginative breadth and expressive legacy of African American art and culture. In the decade since its founding, the Evans Center and SCAD MOA have continually exhibited and celebrated Black artists, including internationally heralded exhibitions focused on the legacies of Jacob Lawrence and Frederick Douglass, as well as contemporary exhibitions by artists including Hank Willis Thomas, Toyin Ojih Odutola, and Kenturah Davis. Visit scadmoa.org.
SCAD: The University for Creative Careers
The Savannah College of Art and Design is a private, nonprofit, accredited university, offering more than 100 academic degree programs across its locations in Atlanta and Savannah, Georgia; Lacoste, France; and online via SCADnow.
SCAD enrolls 15,000 undergraduate and graduate students from more than 100 countries. The innovative SCAD curriculum engages professional-level technology and other advanced learning resources, and affords students opportunities for internships, professional certifications, and real-world assignments with corporate partners through SCADpro, the university’s renowned research lab and prototype generator. In 2020, the prestigious Red Dot Design Rankings placed SCAD as the No. 1 university in the U.S. and in the top two universities in the Americas and Europe for the fourth consecutive year. Career preparation is woven into every fiber of the university, resulting in a superior alumni employment rate. In a recent study, 99% of SCAD graduates were employed, pursuing further education, or both within 10 months of graduation. SCAD provides students and alumni with ongoing career support through personal coaching, alumni programs, a professional presentation studio, and more.