Carolina Alumni Review - September/October 2011

SO11 1 - 15 FTH R1:2011 9/7/11 9:43 AM Page 10

ON VIEW

Ackland Art Museum.

Gathered from the private collections of more than

Bridget Riley,
British, born 1931:
Ceres Fan, 1985;
oil on canvas.
Loaned by Peter
Mallinson ’82 (’83
MBA) and Elisabetta
Mallinson. © Bridget
Riley 2011. All
rights reserved,
courtesy Karsten
Schubert.

Ackland Turns to Alumni Collections

Remember those art posters we used to dress up the bare walls in dorms and apartments? Well, some of us went out, a few years later, and acquired the real thing.

From Monet to Calder, from Bourgeois to Kusama, “Carolina Collects: 150 Years of Modern and Contemporary Art” is an all-alumni show that opened Sept. 9 and runs through Dec. 4 at the

45 alumni, the exhibition brings together nearly 90 treasures by some of the most renowned artists of the modern era — paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and sculptures — many of which have rarely been exhibited.

“We’ve been overwhelmed by the
breadth and quality of the alumni collec-
tions of modern and contemporary art that
we’ve been able to discover,” said Emily
Kass, the Ackland’s director.
Exhibition curator Peter Nisbet
chose only one outstanding work
from any one artist, to maintain a
broad diversity of styles. It includes
American artists Marsden Hartley,
Thomas Hart Benton, Isamu
Noguchi, George Bellows, Louise
Nevelson, Arthur Dove, Milton
Avery, Alice Neel, Richard
Diebenkorn, David Smith, Hans
Hofmann, Roy Lichtenstein, Meyer
Schapiro, Andy Warhol, Joan
Mitchell, Robert Smithson, Jasper Johns
and others. Among the Europeans repre-
sented are Camille Pissarro, Gustave Doré,
Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, André
Derain, Henri Rousseau, Emil Nolde, El
Lissitsky, Gaston Lachaise, Pablo Picasso,
Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Henry
Moore and others.

than 40 years ago.

One area of particular strength is photography, with works by Lewis Hine, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Walker Evans, Weegee and others.

The museum has planned several special events around the exhibition:

■ A Black and White Gala on Sept. 24 will celebrate the alumni collectors.

■ On Nov. 6, Nisbet will moderate a forum on unexpected aspects of collecting. ■ Arts Over Lunch is two lunchtime lectures, at noon Oct. 5 and Nov. 2, designed to illuminate the techniques seen in the artworks of “Carolina Collects.”

Olafur Eliasson, Danish, born 1967: Yellow Planet, 2008; mirror, colored glass, copper, stainless steel, cable. Loaned by James Keith Brown ’84 and Eric Diefenbach. © Olafur Eliasson.

■ Tea at Two features a discussion with Nisbet and Kass on Perspectives on “Carolina Collects” on Nov. 9. GAA members can attend a second of these, on Nov. 13, at no charge.