AROUND THE CIRCLEVolume 5, Number 2; January 2013

The Newsletter of the Tufts University Art Gallery’s

Contemporary Art Circle

TUFTS UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY@ The Shirley and Alex Aidekman Arts Center40 Talbot AvenueMedford, MA 02155

NON-PROFIT ORG

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PERMIT NO. 1161

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TUFTS UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY@ The Shirley and Alex Aidekman Arts Center40 Talbot AvenueMedford, MA 02155617-627-3518galleryinfo@tufts.eduhttp://artgallery.tufts.edu C O N

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More than 4,000 collages were created to compose this 15 minute, 30 second “hand-made !lm” by Stacey Steers, who teaches Film Studies

at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Shot in 35 mm, the 2011 !lm features the early-20th century actress Lillian Gish, who has been seamlessly appropriated from silent-era cinema and plunged into a new and haunting role. Night Hunter evokes a disquieting dreamscape,

drawn from allegory, myth, and archetype. On view from January 17 to March 31, 2013, the !lm will be continuously projected in an exhibition that also includes a monumental dollhouse sculpture (inside which small LED screens feature portions of the !lm that correspond to that room of the house) and eight preparatory collages. The !lmic, literary, and visual sources, references, and allusions in Steers’ work are so rich that Tufts University Art Gallery Director Amy Schlegel, who invited Steers to exhibit at Tufts, attempts to unpack some of them in the following. interview.

!"ght Hun#$%STACEY STEERS&akistani Miniaturist Practice in the Wake of the Global Turn

The practice of Mughal miniature painting originated during the 16th century in the Mughal Empire, which spanned what is now India, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan. This art form was marked

by a meticulous attention to minute detail, lush jewel tones, epic subject matter, and diminutive scale. As the Mughal Empire fell into decline, so did this style. Today we are experiencing a renaissance in this mode of artistic expression, due, in large part, to the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan (NCA), which since the 1980s has taught this

traditional practice of wasli paper- and brush-making techniques, paint mixing, narrative style, and iconography. Two generations of artists have now studied at the NCA and have revived this practice as a relevant contemporary art form by infusing it with their individual visions and contemporary subject matter.

Illuminated Geographies explores how Pakistani miniaturist painting is evolving as it enters into new contexts and how its stylistic foundation is being adapted through four very different artistic visions.

Featuring new works by:Ambreen Butt, Faiza Butt, Murad Khan Mumtaz, and Saira Wasim

AROUND THE CIRCLEVolume 5, Number 2; January 2013

The Newsletter of the Tufts University Art Gallery’s Contemporary Art Circle

Faiza Butt, Zaveer Zangeer, 2011, standing light box

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Stacey Steers, Night Hunter House 2012, Courtesy Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt, Germany

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Contemporary Art Circle Levels of Giving

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CONCEPTUALIST {$25O}Tax deductible contribution $190; bene!ts include: subscription to our biannual newsletter; invitations for you and a guest to special events in Boston, New York City, and other cities such as Los Angeles or Miami; discounted prices on exhibition publications hosted by Tufts; passes to contemporary art fairs such as The Armory Show in New York City in March.

REALIST {$500}Tax deductible contribution $380; in addition to the above, bene!ts include complimentary copies of all Tufts-produced exhibition catalogues.

EXPRESSIONIST {$1000+}Tax deductible contribution $750; in addition to the above, bene!ts include an invitation for you and a guest to attend our annual fall dinner with exhibiting artists in September after the opening reception.

FUTURIST {$50}Ideal for recent alums; donation tax deductible in full; bene!ts include subscription to our biannual newsletter

MATCHING GIFTS WELCOME!

This exhibition focuses on four artists trained at the NCA now living outside of Pakistan who are pushing the boundaries of miniaturist practice in different directions. New works by these four artists–Ambreen Butt, Faiza Butt, Murad Khan Mumtaz, and Saira Wasim–all deal with themes of cultural hybridity as the artists address the political, social, and cultural realities of both Pakistan and their present locations. Saira Wasim, for example, critiques American politics in the visual language of political cartoons, while Faiza Butt addresses the representation of Muslim men in the London media and the aesthetic qualities of the Urdu and English languages. Through their aesthetically beautiful objects, these artists ask dif!cult questions and confront us with the realities of the world we live in.

This exhibition has been guest curated by Justine Ludwig, adjunct curator at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati. A multi-authored publication, Translocation: Contemporary Miniaturist Practice Out of Pakistan (see opposite page) will be co-published by the Tufts University Art Gallery and The Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, which organized Realms of Intimacy: Miniaturist Practice from Pakistan (on view September 2011 to January 2012; featuring Ambreen Butt, Faiza Butt, Imran Qureshi, Nusra Qureshi, and Saira Wasim). The book will also feature 10 contemporary artists trained at the NCA working internationally.

The Tufts University Art Gallery has added a new category to the Contemporary Art Circle’s levels of giving: The Futurist.

This $50 giving level is ideal for recent alumni who want to stay involved with the Art Gallery at Tufts and network with collectors, a!cionados, and

other arts professionals.

The Futurist may also be the right !t for Tufts and SMFA faculty and staff who want to support the Gallery, its academic publications, and innovative

programing, and enjoy the seasonal events in Boston and New York.

Introduction to Illuminated Geographies continued

SPOTLIGHT ON THE FUTURISTS

An Excerpt from Freedom of Expression: Lahore in the 1990s from Translocation: Contemporary Miniaturist Practice Out of PakistanSalima Hashmi, Dean, School of Visual Arts, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore

Contemporary Art Circle List of Supporters

EXPRESSIONIST ($1,000):Ken & Ellen Aidekman Ben Kaye & Shirley Aidekman-KayeMel & Hope BarkanMargery BendetsonSol & Robyn Gittleman

REALIST ($500):Ed Belove & Laura RobertsRuth Fields

CONCEPTUALIST ($250):Sylvan BarnetJohn & Elizabeth EdelglassJan LourieAmy SommerL. Parker Stephenson

On an evening in August 1988, a friend in Islamabad called to give me guarded instructions to turn on the television, because “someone has gone.” The last phrase was

said in a whisper. Indeed, the regular broadcast was replaced by old-fashioned patriotic songs, in Pakistan a sure sign of a power vacuum. Something was up. Seconds later, a former student pulled up to the front door on his motorbike. Dazed and excited, he had come from the old city, where there was dancing in the streets and milk vendors were distributing free milk. There had been a plane crash and the top army brass was wiped out, including General Zia ul Haq. The disbelief––and then the relief! The constant awareness of the general’s vengeful, watchful presence dissipated immediately, gone like a puff of smoke. There followed the strange, almost

physical sensation of a burden being lifted from the collective consciousness. The arts, beleaguered for eleven years, took a while to loosen up. It was a challenge to negotiate the space in our lives that had been altered and recon!gured in Zia’s years, 1977 to 1988. . .

Despite the uncertainty, the mood in institutions such as the National College of Arts (NCA), formerly the Mayo School of Art, was ebullient. Curricula were reshaped, government edicts forbidding male and female students from participating in music or theatrical performances were ignored, and dress codes were modi!ed; the sari, once of!cially frowned on, returned to vogue. Challenging the bigotry and pomposity of the establishment with humor, irony, and irreverence was the order of the day. The army remained out of bounds for critical comment, but sly innuendo was admissible. The communities who had been at the forefront of dissent under the past regime—women artists, writers, poets, journalists, and human rights activists––continued to hold center stage.

Within the NCA, music, mime, and puppetry complemented the academic program, engaging students outside the lecture halls and studios. Traditional and popular culture, long ignored by of!cialdom, was now incorporated into performances with skills acquired in the studio. When Pakistan celebrated !fty years of independence in 1997, it was a time of rejoicing and glossing over the pain of the past, with the NCA organizing some of its most re"ective and serious stage performances ever. Employing shadow puppets, !lm, sound, mime, music, and dance, performances narrated the story of the nation’s history with humor and insight. None of these disciplines formed part of the of!cial curriculum at the NCA, yet it was often on the stage that one experienced the full impact of the creative energy at the college, and this energy affected the teaching of !ne art as well.

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Interview with Valerie Moon continued

East Harlem, Atelier Populaire, The Situationists, ASCO, JR, The Atlas Group, and the Black Power movement, for example. By my senior year, it became so obvious to me that what had previously felt like mindless topic-perusing was entirely intuitive and that my primary interest lies in art and artists that seek to challenge the social and political status quo through artistic practices and process.

To complement my academic studies, I interned at galleries, museums, and other arts institutions both in the US and Spain, where I observed the idiosyncratic environments and personalities of the art world and came to understand what my demands are of that world.

HS: Where would you like to be in !ve, ten, or twenty years?

VM: Hard to say…though, if I could be an "art-ivist" with a ridiculous life story along the likes of Lucy Lippard I could be pretty happy in twenty years!

HS: What advice would you give to undergrads today interested in pursuing a career in the arts?

VM: My greatest advice would be to listen to alumni panels, career services networking advice, and professors, but to also to know when to completely scrap that and have con!dence in what you and your unique experiences have to offer.

If you want to network well, you really have to know what you’re talking about and you have to be a creator, not just a critic or interpreter. Really invest time in !guring out what you are passionate about and why—socially, politically, personally, existentially, etc.—your commitment to that subject is indispensible.

Also, read everything, look at everything, collect ideas, and take risks to put yourself in absurd or challenging situations. You never know when you might ultimately stand out as a candidate.

HS: What questions do you have for those who have blazed the trail before you?

VM: How does one pursue the topics and questions that he/she strongly believes in, without losing touch with what issues are really pressing for the communities and contexts around us? How do I learn to counteract the deep-set ego that I often see even in the most brilliant of curators, and become tuned-in to an authentic multiplicity of subjectivities and viewpoints?

“DURING THE FIRST YEAR OF MY MASTER’S IN

ART HISTORY AND MUSEUM STUDIES, I WORKED

AS A GRADUATE ASSISTANT AT THE TUFTS

UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY. I'D HAD VARIOUS

MUSEUM POSITIONS AND INTERNSHIPS BEFORE,

BUT THE TUFTS POSITION WAS A HUGE STEP

FORWARD IN TERMS OF THE DEGREE OF

INDEPENDENCE AND RESPONSIBILITY I WAS

GRANTED. FOR THE FIRST TIME I WROTE NOT

JUST ONE BUT MANY LABELS AND OTHER

INTERPRETIVE MATERIALS, LIKE AUDIOGUIDE

STOPS, AND I WAS TRUSTED TO DO SO WITH

LITTLE SUPERVISION. I WAS INCLUDED IN

MAJOR DECISIONS, INCLUDING THE THEMATIC

ORGANIZATION AND LAYOUT OF EXHIBITIONS.

NOT LONG AFTER I GRADUATED, I LANDED

A JOB IN THE VERY DIFFICULT MUSEUM JOB

MARKET, SOMETHING I DIDN'T EXPECT TO DO

FOR MANY MONTHS, AND IT IS LARGELY DUE TO

MY EXPERIENCE AT THE TUFTS GALLERY. NOW,

AS CURATORIAL ASSISTANT AT THE BOWDOIN

COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART, I EXERCISE THE

SKILLS I GAINED THERE ON A DAILY BASIS,

NOT LEAST OF ALL BY LIASING WITH STUDENT

WORKERS AND STUDENT MUSEUM ADVOCATES,

POSITIONS I ONCE HELD AT TUFTS.” —

Andrea Rosen (MA 2012, art history), curatorial

assistant, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, New

Brunswick, ME

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On the occasion of two groundbreaking

exhibitions, Illuminated Geographies:

Pakistani Miniaturist Practice in the

Wake of the Global Turn at the Tufts

University Art Gallery (January 17

to March 31, 2013), and Realms of

Intimacy: Miniaturist Practice from

Pakistan at the Contemporary Arts

Center, Cincinnati (September 24, 2011

to January 22, 2012), the host institutions

are collaborating on an extensive

volume to serve as both a record of the

exhibiitons and a thorough investigation

of contemporary miniaturist practice out

of Pakistan.

This fully-illustrated book will feature the following essays and image folios:

• Acknowledgments and introduction by Raphaela Platow, Alice & Harris Weston Director and Chief Curator, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati and Amy Ingrid Schlegel, Director of Galleries and Collections, Tufts University

• Diaspora and Translation: Contemporary Miniaturist Painting as Language and Violence through Beauty: Five Instances of Looking at Terror through the Lens of Aesthetics, by Justine Ludwig

• Exhibition Introductions to Realms of Intimacy and Illuminated Geographies

• Installation images of both exhibitions

• Artist Biographies and Images: Ambreen Butt, Faiza Butt, Imran Qureshi, Nusra Qureshi, Murad Khan Mumtaz, and Saira Wasim

• Freedom of Expression: Lahore in the 1990s, by Salima Hashmi

• Resistance Art, by Ayesha Jalal, the Mary Richardson Professor of History, Tufts University

• Playing with Ornament, by Virginia Whiles

• An appendix with pro!les on 10 artists: Hamra Abbas, Khadim Ali, Ayesha Durrani, Ahsan Jamal, Aisha Khalid, Hasnat Mehmood, Tazeen Qayyum, Talha Rathore, Shahzia Sikander, and Muhammad Zeeshan

• Checklist for both exhibitions

• A reprint of Miniature Painting as Muslim Cosmopolitanism, by Iftikhar Dadi

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Recent Alumni Profile:Valerie Moon ‘11, Art Professional in Port-au-Prince, HaitiAn Interview with Hannah Swartz

HS: What have you done since graduating from Tufts in 2011?

VM: Even before graduating, I started doing research for Pedro Alonzo, adjunct curator at the ICA, who famously brought Shephard Fairey in 2008. At that point, my own interest in street art had been augmenting and it was really our meeting and becoming friends that solidi!ed my current professional interests. I helped Alonzo with curatorial research for the ICA’s recent SWOON and Os Gemeos exhibitions while simultaneous working as a Visitor Services Gallery Assistant.

From the ICA I moved on to work as the assistant to the Contemporary Artist-in-Residence Program at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and also as a Teacher's Assistant for professor Silvia Bottinelli in the Visual and Critical Studies Department at the School of Museum of Fine Arts, which I do to this day. I worked with her on the 1970s Italian movement Arte Povera.

This past year a colleague from the ICA and I put together a discussion forum on socially engaged art, which was was inspired amidst the Occupy Movement as well as the Living as Form summit at Creative Time in the fall of 2011. We are currently working on publishing a compilation of academic

essays and manifestos written by artists, art historians, community organizers, activists, etc. to accompany this forum.

This fall I moved to Port-au-Prince, Haiti to help a friend create a bar-restaurant-community center. I have been organizing !lm screenings (there are no cinemas or theaters in this country), working with Haitian artists, bringing exhibitions to the community space, and also helping strategize the visual narrative that will go on different walls throughout the establishment. Finally, I will be working with Kouraj, the only LGBT rights group in all of Haiti, with a street art/activist project in both Port-au-Prince and Jacmel to show how different marginalized individuals and communities have employed street art to relay powerful social and political messages.

HS: How did your education and/or experience working at the Tufts University Art Gallery help you get where you are today?

VM: On any given day, while working at the Gallery, I spoke with a diverse array of people: students and professors from Tufts, SMFA and other institutions, museum employees, and other arts professionals. As an Ambassador it was my job to engage the visitors , which consequently enabled me to practice my speaking skills and network on the job.

My courses taught me the value of rigorous and dif!cult inquiry, which in turn empowered me to question some of the academic and institutional tropes I was being taught.

I am deeply indebted to some of the professors that I’ve worked with at Tufts, and feel like they were a crucial contribution to my development throughout and beyond school. In particular to Professor Adriana Zavala for teaching me to be aggressively accountable for my research and claims, to Professor Karen Overbey for teaching me the value of circular and sometimes never-ending inquiry, and Professor Silvia Bottinelli for lending me a non American-centric view of art history and politics.

HS: How did you come to decide that the arts is the right career path for you?

VM: Figuring out what kind of art I wanted to pursue was a simple connect-the-dots of my undergraduate education. I had pursued subjects such as Tropicália, murals in gentri!ed

Flash back to the early 1960s and the hit tunes of the doo-wop era. The Marcel’s classic Blue Moon (with its famous bom-ba-ba-bom–dang-a-dang-dang vocal

lead-in) set the tone for The Platters, The Drifters, The Miracles and even Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys.

These were the sounds of the times in 1962 when a handful of Tufts men gathered to sing in the basement of West Hall. They called themselves Jumbos Disciples: The Beelzebubs.

Pop music and the Beelzebubs have come a long way in half a century, and thanks in large part to the Bubs’ inventive musical pioneering, college a cappella has soared into the spotlight through television’s Glee and Sing-Off programs and in the new movie about a cappella Pitch Perfect.

This year, the country’s leading male a cappella group is celebrating its golden anniversary with a special exhibit Tufts University Beelzebubs: 50 Years of Fun Through Song at the Tufts University Art Gallery’s Remis Sculpture Court, January 17 to May 27.

It is being curated by Bubs alumnus Danny Lichtenfeld, A93, who performed with the group all !ve years of his Tufts/New England Conservatory dual-degree program. These were the years, he says, when the Bubs played a key role in changing the course of a cappella history.

“It was just a very exciting time to be part of a singing group that was on the cutting edge,” Lichtenfeld says. “We were leading the incorporation of vocal percussion into a cappella

music, which enabled us to begin performing a much wider range of current pop music.”

Barbershop, gospel, jazz and doo-wop were standard fare for college a cappella groups in the day–and for a while it matched popular taste. But by the ‘70s, a cappella’s reach had fallen behind newer rock music trends.

“We were traveling around to colleges every weekend in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s and many groups were still singing the same songs they’d been singing for years–more choral oriented glee club kind of stuff,” Lichtenfeld says. “When we’d perform, jaws were just dropping everywhere. It was fun. We were at the vanguard.”

While the group had been doing original arrangements since the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, it was Bubs member Deke Sharon, A91, who composed vocal percussion-heavy arrangements that made the Bubs one of the !rst college a cappella groups to perform the likes of “Rio,” by Duran Duran, and “Let's Go Crazy,” by Prince. Both are on their groundbreaking 1991 album, Foster Street.

Sharon is still a major force in the a cappella world and is credited with creating the contemporary a cappella sound. He was the arranger for the movie Social Network, and music director and arranger for Universal Pictures’ new release Pitch Perfect.

Other big favorites made possible by the Bubs’ new arranging style during Lichtenfeld’s time were Peter Gabriel’s

Pictured are seven of the nine original members of The Beelzebubs from 1962-63, including the three founders. From left to right: John Todd (A64); co-founder Neal Robison (A63); co-founder Barrie Bruce (A63); Don Avery (A63); Bill Duvel (A65); Pete Arnold (A64); and co-founder Tim Vaill (A64)

Tufts University Beelzebubs: 50 Years of Fun Through SongGail Bambrick, senior writer, Tufts University Publications

continued on page 14

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Museum Without Walls @ Tufts: Gallery to Launch Mobile App in AprilPhilippa Pitts, Gallery Graduate Assistant

Although the Tufts University Art Gallery mounts its roster of

annual exhibitions within the walls of The Shirley and Alex Aidekman Arts Center at 40 Talbot Avenue, it is also the steward of Tufts University's Permanent Art Collection. Without a dedicated gallery to display selections from the permanent art collection, the Tufts University Art Gallery administers a circulating loan and public art program, extending the museum across campus. From monumental bronzes on the greens to framed prints in department buildings, the Gallery has placed over 200 works of art in buildings and spaces far outside of its own walls. Some are masterworks by household names including Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella, and Louise Nevelson. Others are speci!c images chosen for their relevance to student life.

These works on view have been regarded as hidden treasures on campus, each identi!ed only by basic “tombstone” labels indicating artist, title, date, medium, and donor. To date, there has not been an overarching guide for visitors interested in seeing art on campus; those visitors who happen upon a sited work of art in the collection would not likely know where to go for additional information. Dispersed as they are around campus, the works lack the contextual fullness of the Gallery’s exhibitions: signage, thematic groupings, interpretive wall panels, tour guides, and staff. They do not currently bene!t from the impressive array of educational and outreach programs the Gallery plans around its temporary exhibitions, from speakers, workshops and curatorial talks to brochures, audio guides, and catalogs.

Thanks to a generous grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, The Tufts University Permanent Art Collection will enter the spotlight and receive the full curatorial and programmatic treatment this April via a new smartphone app called “Museum Without Walls @Tufts." The app by no means replaces the curated exhibitions which draw the general public, classes, and student groups into the galleries. Instead, the app targets the informal, accidental,

and casual encounters that many students, faculty, alumni, and community members have with works of art around campus every day.

For instance, a person standing in front of Raul Gonzalez's outdoor mural Merrily... will be offered far more than the few paragraphs of text on the artwork’s label. Using one's smartphone, a visitor can self-select from various information vehicles, choosing to hear from the artist directly as he speaks about his work on Tufts' campus, reading what fellow students have said about

the piece, adding one's own comments, and much more. They might be intrigued by images of murals installed at the same site in previous years and !nd themselves comparing Gonzalez's work with Shepard Fairey's, whose wheat paste and silkscreen print murals inhabited the same wall adjacent to the Mayer Campus Center from 2009-2011.

The app can host video and audio content, as well as zoomable high resolution images to allow visitors to get closer to the pieces than previously possible. Visitors will even be able to pose a question to gallery staff. The app will have numerous features, so the choice of what and how to learn is in the visitor's hands.

Using the TourSphere Platform, the Gallery will take advantage of cutting-edge technology in the museum !eld. Works will be searchable by various criteria, for examples: artist's name, theme, location, or accession number. Visitors lost on campus can locate themselves (and works of art) on GPS-enabled maps. In addition to providing content to those whose curiosity is piqued when they happen upon a work of art, the app will offer a number of thematic guided tours at the touch of a button, beginning each tour at the piece closest to them, not a set starting point, such as Aidekman Arts Center. With an attractive and easy to use platform, this app is a quick and easy portal into a wealth of information–accessible to anyone, anywhere, and at any time. Watch out for the launch of "Museum Without Walls @ Tufts" in April 2013!

“In Your Eyes,” Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game” and the Rolling Stone’s “Sympathy for the Devil,” whose lead singer was Adam Gardner, A95, now a member of the popular rock group Guster.

The Bubs have 34 albums to their credit and may be best-known as the voices and arrangers for the !ctional all-male a cappella glee club “The Dalton Academy Warblers” on TV’s Glee. They also won national fame for their second-place !nish on NBC’s The Sing-Off in 2009.

But musical innovation is not the only reason Lichtenfeld decided to use the expertise he has gained as director of the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center to put together the anniversary exhibit.

“The Bubs motto is ‘Fun Through Song,’ and the guys I sang with are among my closest friends in the world. We had the greatest time together,” Lichtenfeld says. “It was pretty special to spend all that time with a bunch of guys you love and sing this great music.”

And it’s this camaraderie that’s glued the Bubs alumni together for over !ve decades. Intergenerational connections are maintained when all Bubs alumni get together once or twice a year–and this made searching out material for the exhibit, scattered across many locations, a bit easier for Lichtenfeld.

“It was just a matter of reaching out to a connected group to !nd the pieces for the exhibit–just !guring out who had what in their garages or basements” Lichtenfeld said. And since the Bubs have used the same room in Curtis Hall for the past few decades, there was plenty there to sort through, “stuff literally shoved under the couch,” Lichtenfeld said.

Lichtenfeld also credits his Bubs experience and his degrees from Tufts and the New England Conservatory for his own career path. His journey has included teaching music and working at several music-focused non-pro!t organizations before becoming director of the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center.

This background has allowed him to craft an exhibit that will consist of different stations corresponding to the chronological eras of the Bubs, featuring audio, video, photographs, documents and some archival memorabilia.

Lichtenfeld also credits his approach to art to his time at Tufts and with the Bubs.

“Experiencing art– whether visual art, music, theater, or dance–can evoke emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and therapeutic responses that are unobtainable in other facets of life,” Lichtenfeld says. “I hope this exhibit will shed light on the special history and spirit of innovation that make the Bubs such a treasure.”

The 2009-2010 Bubs with Bub alumnus Peter Gallagher (A76) during their appearance on The Sing-Off Back row, left to right: Nick Lamm (A10), Tim Conrad (A10), Evan Powell (A12), Kent McCann (A12), Conor Flynn (A12), Sam Cantor (A13), Matt McCormick (A10)

Front row, left to right: Eric Morrissey (A12), Paul Alvarez (A11), Peter Gallagher (A76), Eli Seidman (A12), Penn Rosen (A11)

Page 6 of 16 Page 11 of 16

Interview with Stacey SteersWith Amy Ingrid Schlegel, Director of Galleries and Collections, Tufts University

Collection Update—Robert Chambers' Singing BowlJeanne Koles, Special Projects Coordinator, Tufts University Art Gallery

First, Leslie Fry’s Colossal AcornHead landed serendipitously outside the Tisch Library in the spring of 2012. Then in August, Somerville artist

Raul Gonzalez created Merrily…, a !ve-panel site-speci!c mural on a brick wall adjacent to the Mayer Campus Center. Since launching its pilot initiative of an outdoor public art program in 2012, the Tufts University Art Gallery has already temporarily sited several noteworthy works of art on campus. Expanding the presence of art on campus to more highly traf!cked areas outside the Aidekman Arts Center not only serves to animate open spaces but also brings the value of art and art discourse to a wider audience.

The Tufts University Art Gallery is particularly excited about the arrival Singing Bowl (1991), an important early work by Miami-based artist and curator Robert Chambers. From its site at the grassy area in front of Sophia Gordon Hall, opposite the Perry and Marty Granoff Center, Singing Bowl embodies the spirit and intention of the public art initiative but instead of being a temporary project, will be a permanent addition to the Tufts landscape. Generously donated by Contemporary Art Circle supporters and avid art collectors David and Barbara Slater, Singing Bowl is the latest addition to the Tufts University Permanent Art Collection and joins several other outdoor sculptures on permanent display.

The 4 #-foot-diameter bowl rests on a plinth that acts like a lever. As viewers raise and lower the bowl with a perpendicular lever, a shotput (which will be made available on request) moves around and emits guttural, meditative sounds. Historically, singing bowls have been made throughout Asia and are used in Buddhist practice to signal the beginning and end of silent mediation periods. Today, singing bowls are applied in more than just religious settings, but have been put into broader practice by health professionals, teachers, spiritual leaders, and mental health professionals to create relaxing and healing environments.

This 500-pound cast-iron, cast-aluminum and magnesium sculpture was !rst exhibited at the artist’s solo show at the Sculpture Center in New York, a show which launched an illustrious career that has been highlighted by numerous awards, residencies, and honors. Chambers is especially known for his combination of sculpture and science, blending non-traditional materials, mingling experimentation and playfulness,

and engaging the viewer in an interactive physical and emotional experience. He has said, “I !nd myself constantly toying with visual connections between science and art, forcing them into a realm of senselessness and chaos. [My] work stimulates viewers into constructing their own understanding of contemporary concerns and questions which may be used as an impetus to encourage associations between disparate entities.”

Certainly this amalgamation of art and science was formulated from childhood; Chambers’ father was a biologist and his mother an artist. This style can be seen in works such as Sugabus (2004), an oversized molecular-looking bronze reminiscent of Jeff Koons, or in the Duchampian modi!ed helicopter Rotorelief (2004), permanently installed at Miami Beach’s Sagamore Hotel.

In Singing Bowl, Chambers pays homage to the way that art can transform and move us, helping us !nd a trance-like state where questioning and wondering come to the forefront. Chambers’ art is not a vehicle to express some prior experience, but like scienti!c experimentation is a conduit for discovery. He has written that “if you feel comfortable with your work, it’s a bad sign….always feel a little unsure.” In this way, the artist can continue to explore the issues affecting him in the moment, and compel the viewer in a more forward-thinking way.

Robert Chambers (American, born 1958), Singing Bowl, 1991, Cast iron, aluminum, and magnesium, 52 inches in diameter (bowl), Gift of David and Barbara Slater, 2012.6

Q (Amy Schlegel): In your “hand-made !lm” Night Hunter, your female character (silent !lm-era star Lillian Gish) is trapped by and eventually escapes from her Victorian domestic environment, which becomes animated and monstrous in proportion. Why are you so interested in Lillian Gish?

A (Stacey Steers): I had seen Lillian Gish in D. W. Grif!th’s Broken Blossoms and was deeply moved by her fearless performance as a teenage girl with an abusive father. Her emotional presence is quite startling. After I !nished my !lm Phantom Canyon I was looking for a new way to incorporate antique photographic materials into my collages and it occurred to me she would make an excellent subject to experiment with.

Q (A.S.): Night Hunter is named after the 1955 cult classic thriller Night of the Hunter, staring Robert Mitchum, Shelley Winters, and Lillian Gish. Could you tell me what you found so inspiring about the !lm, which tells the perverse story of a reverend-turned-serial-killer who tries to con a widow’s children into handing over money hidden by their dead father?

A (S.S.): Night of the Hunter is a stunning !lm and very much about the loss of innocence, which could also be read as a theme in Night Hunter. Honestly, the title was chosen at the end of the project, so I wasn’t driven by connections throughout the making of the !lm, but I did feel that besides the critical role Lillian Gish plays in the !lm, there was a sense of maternal obligation in her character to strive to care for children who randomly appear in her life that was not unlike the way her character in Night Hunter tends to the giant eggs who make their uninvited appearance. In Night of the Hunter Lillian’s character responds !ercely to the threat Robert Mitchum poses toward her wards, which could also be seen as paralleling in some ways the later scenes in Night Hunter.

Q (A.S.): Your !lm’s plot seems to resonate with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 short story The Yellow Wallpaper, a feminist classic, in which the female protagonist, con!ned by her husband to the house, slowly goes mad, or escapes into her own fantasy world. The dollhouse sculpture (pictured on the front cover), inside which excerpts of the !lm appear on 10 small HD screens throughout the house, transforms it into an animate being. Your

imagery here is very resonant with the Femme Maison (Woman House) paintings from the late 1940s by

French-American artist Louise Bourgeois and her later “cell” sculptures, both of which speak abstractly about patriarchal power, the con!nement of women’s social roles to the domestic sphere, and the control of men over women’s bodies. Could you elaborate on the literary and visual art in"uences on your work, and speci!cally Night Hunter?

A (S.S.): I have never read The Yellow Wallpaper, but my literary in"uences would include Angela Carter, whose collected re-working of fairy tales, Burning Your Boats, held strong appeal for me. I love to read, and the 19th century classics have always been a strong draw. I adore Emily Brontë, Jane Austen, George Eliot, and Henry James, all of whom explore women’s roles in particular power relationships. Moving forward, I’m also an ardent fan

Stacey Steers, !lm still from Night Hunter, 2011, Courtesy Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt, Germany

Page 10 of 16

Recap of Droplet: Short Talks and Performances on H!ODorothée Perin, Education Outreach Coordinator, and Hannah Swartz

On Wednesday, November 7th at 6pm, an unusual crowd assembled in the Remis Sculpture Court in the Aidekman Arts Center, including engineering majors, drama students, and members of the Tufts Mountain Club. These students, their friends, and faculty, gathered for a one-of-a-kind event co-organized by the Tufts Institute of the

Environment and the Tufts University Art Gallery entitled, Droplets: Short Talks and Performances on H!O. The partnership was spearheaded by the Gallery in association with the OrtaWater project featured in the Gallery's major fall 2012 exhibition Food-Water-Life—Lucy+Jorge Orta.

This event was conceived to promote the global issues highlighted by artists Lucy+Jorge Orta and for the Gallery to collaborate with an organization on campus that is doing something to resolve the concerns highlighted in the exhibition. We also hoped this collaboration would engage Tufts students directly and across disciplines. T.I.E. (Tufts Institute of the Environment) and the Gallery sent out a call asking students to submit their presentations ideas with only two restrictions: the presentation should be related to the theme of water, and it had to be under 10 minutes.

Stacey Steers, !lm still from Night Hunter, 2011, Courtesy Galerie Anita Beckers, Frankfurt, Germany

• The New Music Ensemble—Tufts’ premiere group for avant-garde music, improvisation, and collaborative arts—performed a suite of three works: Wind, Dripsody, and Antarctica. These performances were all inspired by the Ortas' artwork and used !eld recordings of environmental music combined with live performance.

• Contemporary art historian and entrepreneurship senior, Angelina Zhou, presented a double-take on the bottled water industry and broke down the marketing and advertising strategies behind these slippery brand campaigns in Spinning Water: Tricks of the Bottle Trade.

• Alex Zorniger, a sophomore majoring in International Relations with a concentration in Global Health, Nutrition, and the Environment and founder of the Tufts chapter of the Thirst Project spoke about the global water crisis in his talk Why Some Stay Thirsty with Water Running at Their Feet.

• True Love: Whitewater Kayaking was presented by Hayley Ernyey, sophomore, and David Sokoler, a senior majoring in political science. It started off with a fast paced whitewater kayaking video featuring the Tufts Mountain Club. Both wearing their kayaking gear, Hayley and David talked about rolling clinics and other whitewater kayaking trainings that they have organized in the hope of

recruiting more whitewater kayaking leaders at Tufts.

• Water: Systems, Science, and Society (WSSS) and Environmental and Water Resources Engineering graduate students Jessica Morrison and Stephanie Galaitsis spent time in the West Bank last summer looking at water quality issues. In their presentation titled, Water in the West Bank: A Visual Perspective, they presented photographs depicting the water situation in the West Bank.

THE STUDENTS’ SUBMISSIONS FOR DROPLETS WERE AS VARIED AS WE COULD HAVE HOPED FOR AND SHOWCASED A VARIETY OF ACADEMIC AND RECREATIONAL TALENTS.

THE PRESENTATIONS AND PERFORMANCES INCLUDED:

Senior Angelina Zhou at the November 7 Droplets event holding up her !lled in “I ____ water” participatory card.

of Clarice Lispector, particularly Near to the Wild Heart, her early masterpiece. It’s hard to know what informs us ultimately, but I would like to add that I treasure the work of Maurice Sendak, whose books are always infused with a sense of the dark underside of reality, even though he never abandons the pure presence of unfettered innocence. I try to do the same. I think it’s fair to say I haven’t consciously sought out feminist inspiration, though I see my work as rooted in the feminine. I just try to follow deep intuitive impulses and they seem to carry me in that direction. Of course I do feel lucky to have forebears who have opened these doors before me.

My background is more as a !lmmaker than a !ne artist, so most of my in"uences come from that discipline. I am a big fan of the !lms of the Brother’s Quay and Jan Svankmejer, both of whose work has strong associations with surrealism, as well as collage animators Larry Jordan and Janie Geiser (among many others), and the experimental !lmmakers Gunvor Nelson and Phil Solomon. That being said, I have also always loved the work of Joseph Cornell and William Kentridge. I believe my working process of allowing intuition and association to drive my creative choices is a technique I share with both of these artists. I hadn’t known about those speci!c projects by Louise Bourgeois, although I love her work, but other people have mentioned them to me. I also owe an enormous debt to my former teacher Stan Brakhage, who encouraged me to pursue a uniquely personal vision and paved the way for many of us.

Q (A.S.): Could you speak about your aesthetic choice and narrative style to use black-and-white with "eeting "ashes of

red, and music instead of voice narration? I see connections with William Kentridge’s monochromatic stop-motion drawn animations as well as with German Expressionist prints, the latter being more emotive and less narrative and seemingly closer to your storytelling mode, in which a musical composition (created by Dartmouth College Professor of Music Larry Polansky) takes the place of words.

A (S.S.): The monochromatic aspect of the work is largely a result of incorporating the images I use, 19th century engravings, illustrations and photographs as well as early silent !lms, all originally black and white materials. I started to add some color because I realized I could alter the texture of the image in interesting ways with colored pencil. There are actually a number of colors in Night Hunter, but the red pops out. I also wanted to connect the Lillian Gish images from several !lms "uidly, so I decided to try to always give her dress a red collar, as a source of continuity. I am deeply attracted to both of the sources you mention there, Kentridge and the German Expressionists, particularly Käthe Kollwitz and Max Beckmann. I love the saturation of space and brooding atmosphere you can create with lots of dark, shaded areas. Only one of my !lms has a narrative voice-over, the !rst one, Watunna, where Stan Brakhage provided the narration. There is a long tradition in animation of music and effects-only sound tracks, and I !nd it challenging to work with images as the primary unit of meaning and imaginative consideration. Larry Polansky created a sound track that follows the !lm in minute detail, generating another level of quite speci!c intention, while still allowing for broad interpretation.

Half way through the event, participants were invited to complete their own droplet: a small paper statement saying “I ____ water”, which they were invited to !ll in. Some examples included, “I walk on H$O”, I make "avored seltzer with H$O”, “I swim in fresh and salty H$O.” The statements served as conversation starters during the reception that followed the event. Participants and spectators mingled together, grabbed a bite, discussed presentations, talked about water, made new connections and listen to music played by DJ Brown Bear, also a Tufts student. At the Water Taste Testing table, a small group debated which pitcher was !lled with tap water and which one contained bottled water.

Although unplanned, the evening’s snowfall—visible through the large glass windows—became a serendipitous backdrop for the evenings performances, the swirling crystalized droplets reminding us of the universality of water.

Page 8 of 16 Page 9 of 16

A Look Inside Illuminated GeographiesJustine Ludwig, Guest CuratorAdjunct Curator Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati

Faiza Butt

Murad Khan Mumtaz

This work depicts three men who were suspects in a

plot to blow up at least seven transatlantic "ights from London. In 2009 they were found guilty and jailed for life. In this work titled One, these men are shown as they were in their headshots

that were broadcasted all over the media. The mug shot format removes all context from the individual and presents them as a criminal with very little room to interpret them as anything else. It is a format reminiscent of a beheading. Each of the three men displayed very different emotions when his photograph was taken. Butt worked directly from the images found in the newspaper but changed the scale and placed them on innocuous fuchsia backgrounds. The scale is threatening and directly confronts the viewer, yet the fact that they are carefully rendered in !ne dots reminiscent of miniaturist pardakht marks allows for a delicacy in the work.

In 1875 the National College of

Arts (NCA) in Lahore, Pakistan was

founded. Back then it was called

the Mayo School of Art. The intention

of this school was for Pakistani students

to embrace and continue the Mughal

tradition in painting, while looking to

the Lahore Museum for inspiration.

The miniature painting department was

founded in 1985.

The miniature painting major at the

NCA mimics a traditional eight-year

apprenticeship but in only two years of

schooling. The meticulous technique

begins with the posture of the students.

The students are required to be seated

on the "oor for hours a day, hold their

papers close to their eyes and brace their

painting arms against their body. Their

posture is essential to mastering the tiny

brushstrokes needed to create works

with such !ne details. They spend their

!rst year-and-a-half copying historical

works and learning to make their own

tools. Only in the !nal half-year are they

allowed to explore their own creative

devices. The majority of artists known

for their work in progressing miniaturist

practice as a genre of contemporary art

come from the NCA’s program.

Miniaturist painting as it evolved from

the Mughal tradition is a language, an

aesthetic language that is indigenous to

South Asia and Pakistan in particular. The

language of miniaturist painting is built

upon redundant mark-making called

pardakht. Due to this foundation, the line

becomes a kind of mantra. The painting

exhibits a great deal of the artist’s

presence due to the close proximity that

the artist has with the work during the

long, exhausting hours of its production.

Over time, the line of paint with a !ne-tip

brush on wasli paper, has evolved in a

myriad of directions.

After graduating from the miniature

painting program at the NCA many of

the artists relocate to different countries.

This migration sometimes occurs in the

pursuit of continued education, at other

times to start a family or for political

reasons. In the artist’s change of location

a shift in context occurs. A practice that is

so geographically speci!c, as miniaturist

painting is, clearly exhibits the signs of

its relocation. Subject matter and style

adapt to a new context. For many of the

artists who studied at the NCA and then

relocated to another country, their art

form becomes a hybrid of cultural and

environmental realities. As an art form

that was bred from hybridity (Persian and

Mughal), Pakistani miniaturist painting in

the wake of the global turn is in a unique

position to continue to evolve through

its interaction with different cultures.

Ambreen Butt employs language in her recent work. In I Will Be Called Drawing her drawings speak, they

announce their identity. Other works use writing from her journals. These pages are torn up in a rejection of the past version of the artist as is preserved in the writing. The pages are then reassembled to create patterns and images. The result is a new form that must be read and understood in a different way. These works compel the viewer to look at text as something to be viewed and interpreted as opposed to read. It is a reminder that the written word is always an interpretation. In Call Me a Blasphemy (see detail at left), Butt reworks an English translation of Pakistani blasphemy law by tearing apart the text and recon!guring it as

a swirling vortex, reworking the text to the point of incomprehensiblity. The texts she draws from become untranslatable—they are nonsense that only carry a small sense of the author’s original intention.

Murad Khan Mumtaz, who has lived in the United States in addition to Pakistan,

has created miniaturist works on passports and works that look to Native American traditions. In his body of work Return Mumtaz looks to the American Southwest and utilizes images associated with Native American culture. These paintings are set up like traditional miniaturist works on wasli paper with a clear delineated frame, yet they present idealized landscapes populated by tepees and speak to the history of the North American continent. Other works in the series such as Revelation (at right), Summer Nation, and Winter Nation focus on Native American symbols. Devoid of human presence, but implying human intervention, these works appear as memories. They speak to the reduction of Native American history to a romanticized narrative, the existence of the sacred in the visual language of symbols, and shared traditions between different cultures.

Ambreen Butt

Saira Wasim’s works are centered on political !gures. She

aims to portray how the common man views the politicians who run their country, using !gures such as George Bush and Pakistani leaders and generals. She merges these !gures with symbols commonly used in Mughal traditional miniature painting with contemporary !gures of objects. Like political cartoons, her works use humor to address important issues. Wasim explores the manner in which a single image is interpreted by various cultures. In one series, Ronald McDonald is both clown and aggressor—a stand-in for Western consumerism. Wasim often works in series to allow for individual works to express a single aspect of a larger narrative. This subtle layering of subject matter that allows for different readings based on perspective is a common feature of her paintings.

Saira Wasim

Ambreen Butt, Call Me Blasphemy, 2011, paper on tea stained paper, 57 x 78 inches Faiza Butt, One series, 2012, light box triptych consisting of three ink and acrylic drawings on duratrans polyester !lmMurad Khan Mumtaz, Revelation, 2011, opaque watercolor on wasli paper, 11 x 8 inchesSaira Wasim, I am loving it!, 2010, gouache, graphite, and silver leaf on wasli paper, 31.5 x 24.5 inches