Photography & Art

The original design focused on Anthony and Stanton, with a scroll containing quotations from more than 20 other suffragists.  The Design Commission eliminated the scroll, leaving only the two white women.  What was missing and what became crucial to its ultimate equal rights message in the wake of growing criticism was Sojourner Truth, the African-American abolitionist and suffragist. By Truth taking her place at the table, the monument was complete.  For Bergmann, with less than a year to her deadline, there was no time to waste.

The airline industry was highly regulated until the late 1970s, when deregulation in the United States started a trend to liberalize air traffic around the world. Until then, ticket prices and the destinations an airline was allowed to serve were the main subjects of regulation. Airlines were regarded as important agents for economic growth as well as ambassadors of their home countries abroad, and regulation was to provide stable economic conditions for this promising new industry.

Eventually, Murphy started selling his art at local retailers and galleries. By 2010, Murphy stopped looking for employment as an architect and concentrated on his art, working out of a studio in his home that he shares with his architect wife. His “Forgotten Modernism” series -- currently featured at Gallery 30 South – which is an ongoing catalog of modern architecture, focuses not just on the masterpieces of 20th-century California, but also the middle-class dwellings that helped define the spirit of the West Coast.

As Brooks explains, “Another central component has always been the dazzling glamour and grandeur of Old Hollywood. From the world-weary vamps of the Silent Era to the elegant clotheshorses of the 1930s, to the square-shouldered career woman of wartime women’s pictures, these personas monopolized my imagination. I picked up a rabid interest in classic cinema at a very early age, spending hours in the local library sketching ghostly actresses from classic cinema photography books.

His first series, Atlas Metamorphosis, started with detailed greyscale sumi ink drawings that spawned from a lucid dream. Since then, his art evolves from his series of Sacred Geometry Surrealism paintings, called Iterations, to multimedia public art and installations including sculpture and animation. The subconscious, with its symbolic story-telling, has always played a part in his cultural narrative message.

In 2013, Ai was incarcerated for 81 days as a Chinese dissident. Three months after his release, hopeful curator Haines traveled to Beijing to visit the artist in his studio, where he was under house arrest.  Her goal was to persuade him to create a work on freedom and human rights abuses.  Her venue of choice?  Alcatraz. For Ai, he was obviously tired of “making installations I can’t attend.” Through virtual walkthroughs and a reverential persistence on Haines’s part, a plan was put into action.   

According to Yu, the characters she created for the show are based on her family, friends, childhood imagination, and things she loved as a child. The animal characters in the show have some correlation with her previous mini solo show, Animal World. Yu created a series of zombie animal characters who died from abuse and then returned as zombies to seek revenge on those who had made them suffer.

Not surprisingly, when you arrive on the site, you are greeted with “A Message to Our Community.”  The foundation is “creating paths that lead to a more inclusive and diverse museum and workplace.”  Nearly a year ago, it launched a Diversity, Equity, Accessibility and Inclusion Initiative.  It’s a high order and we can only hope that they can live up to the founding belief that “art can embrace the spirit and transform human behavior.” One example on the website of genius at work is a brief artist’s video profile of Simone Leigh.