the Davis.
DAVIS MUSEUM AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE
Media Contact: Nina J. Berger
781-283-2034, nberger@wellesley.edu
High-resolution images and interviews upon request
THE DAVIS MUSEUM AT WELLESLEY COLLEGE PRESENTS
THE NORTHEAST PREMIERE OF “RADCLIFFE BAILEY: MEMORY AS MEDICINE”
FEBRUARY 15 – MAY 6, 2012
Internationally known Atlanta-based artist Radcliffe Bailey explores
American history and memory to encourage healing and transcendence through art. The exhibition features 30 works that range in scale from grand to intimate,
including installations, paintings, sculptures, works on paper, and modified
found objects.
WELLESLEY,
Mass. – The Davis
Museum at Wellesley College presents the Northeast premiere of Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine, the
most comprehensive examination of works by the artist to date. The exhibition highlights
Bailey’s ceaseless experimentation and improvisation with diverse forms while drawing inspiration from African art, his family’s past, world history and jazz. On
view February 15 through May 6, 2012 in the Bronfman, Chandler, Jobson and
Tanner Galleries, the exhibition is free and open to the public.
“Bailey’s art, informed by a strong social and historical consciousness and solidly grounded in family and community, combines a rich, narrative content with a high-level of abstraction and poetic resonance to explore questions of history and memory," says
Lisa Fischman, the Davis’ Ruth Gordon
Shapiro ’37 Director. “Memory as Medicine underscores the Davis’ continued commitment to introducing internationally known contemporary artists to the Boston area,” The Davis is honored to present the first major solo exhibition of Radcliffe's work in New England, and
on a personal level, I’m thrilled to reconnect with him since our shared
days in Atlanta.”
Through exploration of the past, the
present, and the unknown, Bailey layers meaning into his art by layering
objects. Combining two and three-dimensional forms, he uses various mediums and
scale to create a diverse and engaging collection of art. Mixed-media paintings and installations
incorporate objects steeped in history, including tintypes of distant family
members, African sculptures, disassembled piano keys and Georgia red clay.
These items suggest stories of the black Atlantic diaspora and migrations more
universal and spiritual, and harmonize
an intuitive balance of world history and familial memory. The works make
visual
connections between art and life, people and places, and ancestors and their descendants.
"Whenever you're sick, you
go to the medicine cabinet. For me, I go
to memory. The idea of memory heals me and takes me to another place,"
said Bailey, explaining the title of his exhibition. “Growing up, I spent a
lot of time with my grandparents and other family members and I feel like that’s
lost in most families today. In my art, I try to restore some of the lost
kinship between people.”
OBJECTS ON VIEW:
The exhibition presents Bailey’s work by looking at three main themes:
“Water,” “Blues” and “Blood.” Works included in the “Water” group feature the
artist’s references to the Black Atlantic as a site of historical trauma as
well as an artistic and spiritual journey. “Blues” highlights works that
illustrate the importance of music as a transcendent art form, including
Bailey’s 1999 painting “Transbluesency,” which refers to a book of poems by
Amiri Baraka and echoes the “Blues” theme. The third theme, “Blood,” features works
focusing on the ideas of ancestry, race, memory, struggle and sacrifice. This
section further explores the artist’s engagement with African sculptures in
tandem with his investigation of his own family’s DNA.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Memory
as Medicine features Bailey’s
monumental Windward Coast, a monumental sculptural installation that
shapes wooden piano keys from more than 400 pianos into undulating waves. A lone head, painted glittery black, bobs in this
expanse. The work of art, which
the New York Times calls “a star attraction” among the thirty-five
pieces presented, refers to the African slave trade, to water, blues and blood,
and evokes musicality, human transcendence and survival.
In 2006, Bailey learned his family’s ancestral links to the Mende
people of Sierra Leone. This inspired the smallest, most intimate work he ever
created―a miniature drawing done in ink and coffee on a piece of sheet music
that features a Mende mask framed within a tiny red-velvet lined, 19th-century
tintype case, as though a family portrait. This work is on view in the
exhibition alongside more recent works, including a new sculpture that has the
smooth, curvilinear forms of Mende masks. It is made of wood and was repeatedly
rubbed with finishing wax in a daily studio ritual. Minus the functional
purpose of Mende masks, this work becomes a Brancusi-esque objet d’art, an
inscrutable prop for a Neo-Dada-style, contemporary art world performance.
At the core of the exhibition is Bailey’s “medicine cabinet
sculptures.” Their contents include a broad range of culturally charged
objects, imagery and raw materials, from indigo powder to tobacco leaves to
Georgia red earth. Just as Kongo minkisi sculptures from central Africa
contain healing and protective medicine within mirrored packets, the socially
cathartic contents of Bailey’s medicine cabinet sculptures are deeply recessed
under reflective, tinted glass. These sculptures were conceived to link the too
often disconnected histories of peoples of Africa and the African Diaspora and
to emphasize collective experiences.
A number of works in
the exhibition highlight the artist’s practice of animating his work with
large-scale photographic reproductions of black-and-white prints given to him
by his grandmother as well as historic photos he collects, in order to place
African Americans at the center of both American and world history. “I am
interested in an Africanism that permeates our contemporary world but goes
unnamed and is not talked about or fully addressed culturally,” stated Bailey. “I
am interested in the impulse of that mysterious African force that propels
black people wherever they are in the world.”
Curated by Carol
Thompson, Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art, with Michael Rooks, Wieland Family Curator
of Modern & Contemporary Art, Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as Medicine
is organized by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. It is made possible by the
National Endowment for the Arts as part of “American Masterpieces: Three Centuries
of Artistic Genius.” Additional support is provided by the Lubo Fund and the
Radcliffe Bailey Guild.
The presentation and related programs at the Davis are
generously supported by Wellesley College Friends of Art, the Constance Rhind
Robey ’81 Fund for Museum Exhibitions, and the Betsy Patterson Colburn Endowed
Fund for Davis Museum Program Support.
A full-color catalogue accompanies “Memory as Medicine,” featuring
essays by Carol Thompson, Michael Rooks, Edward S. Spriggs, René Paul
Barilleaux and Manthia Diawara, with a foreward by High Museum Director Michael
E. Shapiro.
RADCLIFFE BAILEY
The New York Times describes artist Radcliffe Bailey's shimmering,
shape-shifting works as being fueled by an exploration of "Black Atlantic
culture, the vital, nurturing, agitated link between Africa and the
Americas."
Born in 1968 in Bridgeton, New Jersey,
Radcliffe Bailey moved to Atlanta when he was four years old. Growing up, his
interest in art was piqued by visits to the High and the art classes he took at
the Atlanta College of Art. As a teenager Bailey, who grew up in Hank Aaron’s
neighborhood in Atlanta, pursued his early love of baseball and played semi-pro
for a year. He ultimately decided he was too small for his position as catcher
and followed his mother’s vision for him by enrolling at the Atlanta College of
Art, where he earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1991.
In 1996, Bailey gained acclaim
for his large-scale mural “Saints,” a commission for Atlanta’s
Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport for the 1996 Summer Olympics in
Atlanta. “Saints” remains on view, welcoming travelers entering the airport at
International Terminal E. From 2001 to 2006
Bailey taught at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of
Georgia. In 2004, he received a Joan
Mitchell Foundation Grant and was a visiting faculty member of Skowhegan School
of Painting and Sculpture in 2006.
Bailey’s work is represented in leading museum
collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Smithsonian
Museum of American Art and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San
Francisco Museum of Art; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Nelson-Atkins
Museum of Art, Kansas City; the Art Institute of Chicago; and the High Museum
of Art, Atlanta.
EXHIBITION EVENTS
Opening Celebration
Wednesday, February 15 | 5 pm to 7 pm
Davis Lobby and Galleries
Free
Join us to welcome Radcliffe Bailey to the
Wellesley College campus, and celebrate the presentation of his extraordinary
exhibition, Memory as Medicine.
Film
Screening
Space is the Place (1974)
Wednesday,
February 29 | 6 pm
Collins
Cinema
Free
Sun Ra— a free-jazz keyboardist, space-age
prophet, and the star of the film— is one of Radcliffe Bailey’s favorite
musicians. In this film, Sun Ra and his spaceship land in Oakland, having been
presumed lost in space. With Black Power on the rise and the fate of the Black
race at stake, Sun Ra disembarks from his spaceship and proclaims himself the
“alter-destiny,” with a mission to rescue and redeem his people. Space is
the Place is a portrait of the complex persona and “cosmic” philosophies
that made Sun Ra a pioneer of afro-futurism.
Co-sponsored by the Music Department and The Susan and Donald Newhouse Center for
the Humanities.
Conversation
with the Artist
Wednesday, March 28 | 5 pm
Collins Cinema
Free
Radcliffe Bailey is joined by Carol Thompson,
exhibition curator and Fred and Rita Richman Curator of African Art at the High
Museum of Art, Atlanta, and Lisa Fischman, Ruth Gordon Shapiro ‘37 Director of
the Davis, for a lively conversation on the artist’s work.
Lecture:
Nikki A. Greene on Radcliffe Bailey's Soundscapes
Wednesday, April 18 | 6 pm
Collins
Cinema
Free
Nikki A. Greene, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in
Art History & Africana Studies, explores the harmony between music
and visual art within African American culture. While countless artists call on
inspiration from various musical forms, especially blues and jazz, Radcliffe
Bailey creates original compositional “riffs” that not only incorporate rhythms
and beats structurally, but also transform materials and space (meta)physically
as part of his distinctive visual-aural language and style.
Family Day at the Davis: Memory in Mixed Media
Saturday, April 21 |
11 am – 1 pm
Davis Lobby and Galleries
Free
Inspired by Radcliffe Bailey: Memory as
Medicine, this Family Day examines memory — personal and collective — as a
source of inspiration in art making. Young visitors will participate in an
interactive exploration of Bailey’s work, with its vibrant colors, unusual
materials, dynamic compositions, and rich narratives, followed by art projects
based on appropriation, accumulation, and layering. Focusing closely on Windward
Coast, an installation likened to the sea, we investigate the recurring
piano keys in Bailey’s work. Light refreshments served.
Davis MuseUM GENERAL
Information
Location: Wellesley
College, 106 Central St., in Wellesley, Mass.
Museum Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 am-5 pm, Wednesday until 8 pm,
and Sunday, noon-4 pm. Closed Mondays,
holidays, and Wellesley College recesses.
Admission is free and open to the
public.
Telephone: 781-283-2051
Website:
www.davismuseum.wellesley.edu
Parking: Free and available in the lot behind the museum.
Additional parking is available in the Davis Parking Facility.
Tours: Led by student tour guides
and curators. Free. Call 781-283-3382
Accessible: The Davis, Collins Café and Collins Cinema are
wheelchair accessible and wheelchairs are available for use in the Museum
without charge. Special needs may be accommodated by contacting Director of
Disability Services Jim Wice at 781-283-2434 or jwice@wellesley.edu.
ABOUT THE DAVIS MUSEUM
One of the oldest and most acclaimed
academic fine arts museums in the United States, the Davis Museum is a vital
force in the intellectual, pedagogical and social life of Wellesley
College. It seeks to create an
environment that encourages visual literacy, inspires new ideas, and fosters
involvement with the arts both within the College and the larger community.
ABOUT WELLESLEY COLLEGE & THE
ARTS
The
Wellesley College arts curriculum and the highly acclaimed Davis Museum and
Cultural
Center
are integral components of the College’s liberal arts education. Departments and programs from across the
campus enliven the community with world-class programming – classical and popular
music, visual arts, theatre, dance, author readings, symposia and lectures by
some of today’s leading artists and creative thinkers – most of which are free
and open to the public.
Located
just 12 miles from Boston and accessible by public transit, Wellesley College’s
idyllic surroundings provide a nearby retreat for the senses and inspiration
that lasts well after a visit.
Since
1875, Wellesley College has been a leader in providing an excellent liberal
arts education for women who will make a difference in the world. Its 500-acre campus near Boston is home to 2,400
undergraduate students from all 50 states and 75 countries.
Nina J Berger
Media Relations Director
the Davis.
Davis Museum and Cultural Center
Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02481