PRESS RELEASE  CHICAGO OFFICE OF TOURISM
 
 

Niki in the Garden wins top honors at the 2008 Illinois Governor’s Conference on Tourism

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, 19 MARCH 2008 — The Chicago Office of Tourism is pleased to announce that its summer tourism marketing campaign “Niki in the Garden” received two prestigious awards from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity on February 15, 2008:

Best Integrated Marketing Campaign by a large organization.

Best in Show, the overall strongest marketing campaign by any organization in the State of Illinois for 2007. Niki in the Garden was selected from more than 100 applicants to receive this award.

The “Niki in the Garden” marketing campaign included print, online, outdoor and transit advertising, a dedicated web site, brochures and other collateral materials designed and produced by the Chicago Office of Tourism.

More than 145,000 people visited the Garfield Park Conservatory to see “Niki in the Garden,” an increase of 300 percent over the previous year’s attendance during the same time period.

 
City of Chicago
Richard M. Daley, Mayor

 
Department of Cultural Affairs
Lois Weisberg, Commissioner

PRESS RELEASE  P.S.1 CONTEMPORARY ART CENTER
 
 

Opening February 17, 2008 through May 12, 2008

NEW YORK, 17 FEBRUARY 2008 — P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution, the first comprehensive, historical exhibition to examine the international foundations and legacy of feminist art. Organized by MOCA Ahmanson Curatorial Fellow Connie Butler for The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, WACK! focuses on the crucial period of the 1970s, during which the majority of feminist activism and artmaking occurred internationally. Praising the exhibition, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center Director Alanna Heiss notes: “In addition to exploring international occurrences of feminist art, the show emphasizes New York’s role in the movement, as well as its relationship with each artist involved. This is a particularly happy coincidence for P.S.1, as Connie Butler, the curator of WACK! in Los Angeles, has since last year joined the staff at the Museum of Modern Art, and will work on the very special installation of the exhibition with P.S.1 Director of Operations and Exhibitions Design Antoine Guerrero.” This exhibition will be displayed on the entire First and Second Floors, and in the Third Floor Main Gallery from February 17, 2008 through May 12, 2008.

The exhibition spans the period of 1965 to 1980 and includes 120 artists and artist groups from the United States, Central and Eastern Europe, Latin America, Asia, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. WACK! includes work by women who operated within the political structure of feminism as well as women who did not necessarily embrace feminism as part of their practice, but were impacted by the movement. Comprising work in a broad range of media — including painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, and performance art — the exhibition is organized around themes based on media, geography, formal concerns, collective aesthetic, and political impulses. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue.

A series of performances and panel discussions presented in the Third Floor Main Gallery will connect featured artists with younger generations inspired by feminism. Click here for the full calendar.

WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution is organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.

The presentation of the exhibition at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center is made possible by Kathy and Richard S. Fuld, Jr., Agnes Gund, Jerry I. Speyer and Katherine G. Farley, and the Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation for the Arts, Inc.

Additional support is provided by The Modern Women’s Fund, David Teiger, the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency, and The Contemporary Arts Council of The Museum of Modern Art.

The presentation at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles was made possible by The Annenberg Foundation. Additional generous support was provided by Geraldine and Harold Alden; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the National Endowment for the Arts; The Peter Norton Family Foundation; Audrey M. Irmas; The Jamie and Steve Tisch Foundation; The MOCA Contemporaries; Wells Fargo Foundation; The Broad Art Foundation; Vivian and Hans Buehler; the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Donor Advised Fund at the Boston Foundation; Étant donnés: The French-American Fund for Contemporary Art; the Robert Lehman Foundation; Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V., Stuttgart; the Pasadena Art Alliance; Frances Dittmer Family Foundation; the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation; Peg Yorkin; Merrill Lynch; the Fifth Floor Foundation; The Cowles Charitable Trust; Rosette V. Delug; The Herringer Family Foundation; and the Polish Cultural Institute. Major support was also provided by Susan Bay Nimoy and Leonard Nimoy with the members of the WACK! Women’s Consortium.

Operations and programs of P.S.1 are supported by the P.S.1 Board of Directors, the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The Office of the President of the Borough of Queens, The Council of the City of New York, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency. Additional funding is provided by individuals, foundations and corporate contributions.

PRESS RELEASE  MISSOURI BOTANICAL GARDEN
 
 

Colorful, playful mosaic sculptures by Niki de Saint Phalle

ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI, 7 JANUARY 2008 — The passionate, imaginative fine art of Niki de Saint Phalle is coming to the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis in 2008! From April 27 through October 31, Niki will present 40 mosaic and painted sculptures gathered from around the world, placed throughout the lovely 79-acre botanical garden.

A prolific self-taught artist, Niki created a repertoire of work that also included paintings and illustrations. She sculpted her playful, larger-than-life creations from fiberglass, stones, glass, mirrors and semi-precious materials. Visitors are encouraged to touch many of them and some invite sitting or climbing.

Her work is well-known throughout Europe, South America and Asia. She designed and built two permanent sculpture gardens: The Tarot Garden in Tuscany (1980-1998) and Queen Califia’s Magical Circle (1999-2003) in Escondido near San Diego. She also has major public pieces in Paris (Stravinsky Fountain); in Hannover and Duisburg, Germany; and the Golem in Jerusalem, as well as a collaboration with Mario Botta on Noah’s Ark, also in Jerusalem.

Several of the Niki works include nanas, animals, heroes, and totems, ranging from four to eighteen feet tall. Some weigh a ton or more, such as the amazing six-ton La Cabeza (The Head).

Nanas is a French term for “chicks” or “babes.” These joyful, robust dancing women are among Niki’s best known works. Nanas have appeared in museums, outdoor sculptural exhibitions and as part of major permanent collections around the world.

Niki loved to see children climbing on her animal sculptures. Her Guardian Lions, Cat, Seals and Nikigator invite exploration from the inside out.

Black Heroes portray iconic images of African-Americans in music and sports, including Louis Armstrong and East St. Louis native Miles Davis. Totems were inspired by the artist’s reverence for animals, nature, and Native American culture and traditions.

Niki will be included with $8 general admission to St. Louis’s historic botanical garden (St. Louis City and County residents, $4 adults, $2 seniors). Members and children age 12 and under are free.

“Niki Nights” on Thursdays from May through September will feature casual outdoor dining and family entertainment from 5 to 9 pm. “Niki Nights” admission will be $7 adults, $3 children and $5 Garden members. The Doris I. Schnuck Children’s Garden: A Missouri Adventure will remain open until dusk on “Niki Nights” at no extra charge.

The Garden will offer audio commentary of the exhibition by cell phone or mp3 player, available for download at www.mobot.org. The Garden Gate Shop will carry Niki merchandise and mosaics for the home and garden.

The Missouri Botanical Garden is located at 4344 Shaw Boulevard in St. Louis, just south of Interstate 44, two blocks east of the Vandeventer-Kingshighway exit. Park for free at the Garden and two blocks west at the Shaw-Vandeventer intersection. Please note that a section of I-64/U.S. 40 is under construction through 2009. Before traveling, check www.thenewi64.org for updates. Go to www.GetAroundStL.com for other helpful information. Rail commuters can take MetroLink to the Central West End station and catch a Metro bus to the Garden (www.metrostlouis.org).

For general Garden information, log on to www.mobot.org or call the 24-hour Garden Line recording at (314) 577-9400 or 1-800-642-8842. Read about Niki de Saint Phalle and her art on the web at nikidesaintphalle.com and nikidesaintphalle.org.

PRESS RELEASE  TATE LIVERPOOL
 
 

LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND, 20 SEPTEMBER 2007 — From 1 February to 27 April 2008, Tate Liverpool will present the first UK exhibition of Niki de Saint Phalle’s work since her death in 2002. The Franco-American painter and sculptor is best known for her Fontaine Stravinsky works on display outside the Centre Pompidou. The exhibition presents a comprehensive survey of the artist’s entire career and will include key examples of all phases of her work: from her early assemblages and paintings in the 1950s, her acclaimed Shooting Paintings in the early 1960s, her religious altars and bride sculptures in the mid 1960s, the Nanas and larger sculptural works, a wide selection of graphic work, to her late works including the Skull Meditation Room, 1990.

Beautiful, flamboyant, daring, provocative and fiercely independent, Niki de Saint Phalle emerged in the 1960s as a powerful and original figure in the masculine international arts world centred around Paris. Yet despite her association with the Nouveau Réalistes, a number of collaborations with many of the world’s leading artists, and her marriage to Jean Tinguely, her work has largely been overlooked, or dismissed as merely playful. A believer in mythology and fairy tales, her work is bright and colourful, demonstrating an exuberant love of life, at the same time revealing a certain darkness. This exhibition, a wide-ranging presentation of the work and exploration of her themes and concerns, will attempt to address this oversight and bring her work to a wider audience.

She began her career as an artist in the 1950s, when she worked in oils and collage but also began to make small, painted sculptures. Her images were figurative, almost naïve depictions of imaginary landscapes, buildings and creatures, using a broad range of colours and covering surfaces with dense and decorative patterns.

In her Assemblages, begun in the 1950s, she created a very personal world based on found everyday objects which she embedded in plaster as a relief. However, they were often littered with violent objects such as knives, scissors, nails and blades. Her darker side was also revealed in portraits of the time, such as Portrait of My Lover (1961), where the head has been substituted by a target studded with darts. This became part of a series known collectively as the Shooting Paintings (Tirs), with which she is most closely associated, and which secured her place amongst the Nouveau Réalistes, alongside artists such as Yves Klein, Daniel Spoerri and Arman in Paris in the early 1960s.

Undoubtedly influenced by American artists such as Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, who were working in Paris at the time, her Shooting Paintings explored the idea of the violent gesture in abstract art, in what can be read as a parody of the machismo of action painting. Embedding pockets filled with paint and foodstuffs within a thick layer of plaster on canvas, spectators were invited to shoot the paintings in order to make the pictures ‘bleed’. Tinguely, Spoerri, Rauschenberg and Johns all participated in the various ‘shoot-outs’ held between 1961-63. The moment of action and an emphasis on chance were as important as the finished work. She stopped making them in 1963, explaining, ‘I had become addicted to shooting, like one becomes addicted to a drug’. Niki de Saint Phalle went on to work with these artists in a number of collaborations, such as the décor for Variations II by John Cage at the American Embassy in Paris, and in 1962 with Rauschenberg, Martial Raysse, Daniel Spoerri, Per Olaf Ulveld and Ad Peterson on the Dylaby exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

As Niki de Saint Phalle’s work progressed, she became interested in ideas of femininity and the representation of women. She originally explored these ideas through a series of works on the theme of the Bride. This led to the Nanas, which were very large brightly-coloured sculptures of women that, due to their generous size and form, have become iconic and enduring archetypal images of maternity and femininity. In 1966 she created a 28-metre-long Nana, Hon, for the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, where visitors were invited to enter the woman between her legs, inside of which they found a bar, a screening room and various viewing platforms. Niki de Saint Phalle continued to explore these themes until her death in 2002, as well as working on more monumental works which culminated in the magical Il Giardino dei Tarocchi (Tarot Garden) in Italy.

 
Notes to Editors

For further information and images please contact the Tate Liverpool Press Office:

Stacey Arnold
call: 0151 702 7444
e-mail: stacey.arnold@tate.org.uk
 
Phil Olsen
call: 0151 702 7445
e-mail: phil.olsen@tate.org.uk

 
Liverpool European Capital of Culture 2008

 
SOURCE: Tate Liverpool

PRESS RELEASE  MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, LOS ANGELES
 
 

MOCA to present first major exhibition to examine the foundations and legacy of feminist art produced internationally from 1965 to 1980

LOS ANGELES, 11 JANUARY 2007 — The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) presents the first international survey of a remarkable body of work that emerged from the dynamic relationship between art and feminism in and around the 1970s. WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution — on view at The Geffen Contemporary at MOCA March 4 – July 16, 2007 — brings together the work of 119 artists from 21 countries to examine how the feminist movement fundamentally changed the way we see and understand art.

More than eight years in the making, WACK! is organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art and curated by Ahmanson Curatorial Fellow Connie Butler — curator at MOCA for 10 years (1996-2006) and current Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. MOCA Director Jeremy Strick notes that, “MOCA is a most fitting institution to organize this groundbreaking exhibition given its tradition of mounting scholarly, ambitious, and risk-taking thematic surveys.” Following its debut at MOCA, the exhibition will tour to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C. (September 21–December 16, 2007); P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in Long Island City, New York (Winter 2008); and the Vancouver Art Gallery in British Columbia, Canada (Summer 2008).

In the late 1960s through the ’70s — a period marked by the resurgence of feminism — a fundamental shift in women’s perceptions of their own social roles began to have an impact on contemporary art practices. As reflected in the exhibition’s title, WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution focuses on the intersection of art and feminism during this era and recaptures the idealism of the feminist movement. “WACK” is not an acronym in itself, but was chosen by curator Connie Butler to recall the acronyms of many activist groups and political communities from this time whose activities focused on women’s issues and cultural production.

While the term “feminism” can be broadly defined, scholar and author Peggy Phelan states, “Feminism is the conviction that gender has been, and continues to be, a fundamental category for the organization of culture. Moreover, the pattern of that organization favors men over women.” Embracing this definition, WACK! argues that feminism was perhaps the most influential of any postwar art movement — on an international level — in its impact on subsequent generations of artists.

In the past few decades, a canonical list of American artists have become identified with the feminist movement. The exhibition dismantles this canon through the inclusion of women of other geographies, formal approaches, socio-political alliances, and critical and theoretical concerns. The artists in WACK! do not necessarily all identify themselves or their work as feminist. Nonetheless, as artist Susan Hiller has said, “Art practice with no overt political content may, nevertheless, be able to sensitize us politically.” The globalized model adopted by WACK! acknowledges the importance of artists working in their own communities and/or connecting with artists elsewhere and recognizes that while individual artists may work in relative isolation, their practice — and worldview — comes together through discourse, affinity, and relationship.

Influential proto-feminist work produced by artists in the years immediately prior to the florescence of the ’70s is also featured, including work by important figures who were active through that crucial decade and beyond, but whose contributions in the mid-’60s anticipated new feminist aesthetics that took hold during the ’70s. The scope of the exhibition also allows for the inclusion of the early work by such artists as Cindy Sherman and Lorraine O’Grady, representing a division between essentialist work of the ’70s — which hypothesized a universal way to portray female experience — and a more theory-driven approach adopted during the ’80s — which accounted for concepts like race, class, and sexual orientation.

Rather than following a chronological sequence, WACK!’s thematic organization encourages a dialogue between individual works from a wide range of media — including painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, and performance art. The themes are: Abstraction, Autophotography, Body as Medium, Body Trauma, Collective Impulse, Family Stories, Female Sensibility, Gendered Space, Gender Performance, Goddess, Knowledge as Power, Labor, Making Art History, Pattern and Assemblage, Silence and Noise, Social Sculpture, Speaking in Public, and Taped and Measured.

Exhibition Catalogue
WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue. Each artist in the exhibition is represented by a short biographical text and a selected bibliography. An extensive chronology offers an essential overview of the period. In addition to a significant curatorial essay by Connie Butler, the catalogue presents new scholarship on individual artists and subjects related to feminism in art. Contributing authors include the highly respected scholars Connie Butler, Judith Russi Kirshner, Catherine Lord, Marsha Meskimmon, Richard Meyer, Helen Molesworth, Peggy Phelan, Nelly Richard, Valerie Smith, Jenni Sorkin, and Abigail Solomon Godeau. Design is by Lorraine Wild and Green Dragon Office, Los Angeles.

Public Programs
MOCA will host a variety of related programs in conjunction with the exhibition, including an in-depth lecture series, round-table discussions, workshops, an extensive film series, and an independent web site. Taken as a whole, the components of this project will initiate new dialogue about feminist art and will provide a forum for scholarly reconsideration of one of the most influential movements in American art of the postwar period.

WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution is organized by The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. The exhibition curator is Connie Butler, former curator at MOCA and current Robert Lehman Foundation Chief Curator of Drawings at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. At MOCA, the exhibition is coordinated by Corrina Peipon, Curatorial Assistant and Project Coordinator.

WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution is made possible by the Annenberg Foundation. Additional support is provided by Geraldine and Harold Alden; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; the National Endowment for the Arts; The Peter Norton Family Foundation; Audrey M. Irmas; The Jamie and Steve Tisch Foundation; The MOCA Contemporaries; Vivian and Hans Buehler; the Barbara Lee Family Foundation Donor Advised Fund at the Boston Foundation; Étant donnés: The French-American Fund for Contemporary Art; The Broad Art Foundation; the Hugh M. Hefner Foundation; Peg Yorkin; Merrill Lynch; the Fifth Floor Foundation; and The Cowles Charitable Trust.

Major support is also provided by Susan Bay Nimoy and Leonard Nimoy with the members of the WACK! Women’s Consortium: Contemporary Collectors–Orange County; Mandy and Clifford J. Einstein; Lois G. Rosen; Carol and David Appel; Drs. Arie & Rebecka Belldegrun; Pamela and Roger Birnbaum; Fabrizio and Lorraine Bonanni; Blake Byrne; Christie’s, Inc.; Leslie and John Dorman; Gil Friesen and Janet Reinstra; Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro; The Karan-Weiss Foundation; Suzanne Nora Johnson and David G. Johnson; Dr. and Mrs. Kihong Kwon; Lyn and Norman Lear; Mesdag Family Foundation; B.J. Russell Mylne; Brenda Potter and Michael Sandler; Jennifer and Manfred Simchowitz; Catharine and Jeffrey Soros; Elizabeth Swofford; David Teiger; Lauren and Bobby Turner; The Unterman Family; Joe and Susan Wingard; and the Wolff Family Private Foundation.

89.9 KCRW is the Official Media Sponsor of MOCA. The Millennium Biltmore Hotel is MOCA’s Official Hotel. Generous in-kind support is provided by MySpace.