Framing your art through art history...
A curatorial challenge

It is important that art students develop an appreciation, understanding, and vocabulary in the art which led to our place in history. Over the year you will gain some familiarity with the history of art and the theories which continues to permeate through artists today. It may be fruitful to:

1. find where your artistic voice sits in the ongoing art conversation
2. discover ways to discuss and share your art work and that of others.

Your Challenge:

Curate an art show through a virtual medium.
Present your exhibit using Wordpress or other online vehicle.
(see wordpress gallery types)

Your gallery is asking you to feature the work of a contemporary artist using other works from their permanent collection to tell a story.

Any art show is like an artwork itself. It frames the work to tell a story (narrative) in relation to the work's content, context (historical relevance) or medium. The show use the collection to make be a social commentary or tell us of what influenced the artist.

Examples:

• Andy Warhol and Jean Michel Basquiat worked together so they had a show together. Their work and approaches were was so different that they were represented as competing boxers.
• Francis Bacon spent time working from the work of Velasquez, so it could make sense to juxtapose their works. See Bacon referenced Velasquez
• In creating your show's narrative you might consider how events and/or technological innovations of their time shaped their art, shared or contrasting subjects of interest, and specific social and economic conditions that inform their work. (Goya and Dix: Faces of Death).

You exhibit needs to include a virtual catalogue (essay) that explains the relevance of each work in relation to your artist. This may present itself as an essay or as a couple of paragraphs with each artwork.

Your Art Work:

ALSO, create an artwork of your own that would fit within this exhibit.

Include a Summary Sheet:

• Provide peers with a one page typed and illustrated summary (3 images with details) of your exhibition
  
• Consider layout design and font choices

Getting Started:

You need to choose an artist.

Visit www.art21.org for great introductory videos of contemporary American artists

See the Canadian Artist Database

For a an artist to research, if one is not recommended to you, you may select one from this list:

This research will turn into:

1. A Presentation

2. An artwork inspired by the artist researched

3. A collection of notes you gathered from your witnessing the presentations

Learning Targets (expectations)

Virtual Exhibit (60):

Your Wordpress gallery will:

• Have an attractive and visually relevant main page that captures the show's spirit. This main page should briefly inform us of the scope, depth and relevance of your exhibit. Give the show a title.
• Include 10 artworks: 5 from your artist in focus and 5 others. Among these, you should show and connect one of your own artworks and one from among Ancient Greece through the 19th Century.
• Provide a guide for your viewers in form of an essay or descriptive and connecting synopsis for each image.
• Clarity of ideas and design while editing of flaws are important considerations as they influences your authority.

Presentation (20):

You will share your site with your class to promote your exhibit.

• Explain to us your theme and convince of the merits of your exhibit. Do this by sharing and explaining highlights.
• With one work outline its visual qualities (form) and the significance of its form and content.
• Describe the formal qualities, content, and meaning of one in depth.

Summary Sheet (20):

• Provide peers with a one page typed and illustrated summary (3 images with details) of your exhibition
  
• Consider layout design and font choices

Possible strategies for delivery of your presentation:

• Go simple and straight forward. Make a clear and succinct presentation.
• In period dress, take on their personae and tell stories about their life and what/why they did
• Puzzle of a painting dissected. In borders information of style, and back on piece information of work. When flipped over, the picture should come together
  audience as performers (Warhol style).. enter into the artist's mind.
• video documentation / faux interview
• idea tools, such as giving everyone a concept to chew over and respond to.
• describe work and have students blindly imitate it.
• everyone gets an outline of a work, and each person fills it in.
• games

Artwork

Create an art work influenced by the artist you have researched. Carefully consider:

• materials
• appropriateness of scale
• aesthetic and social contexts and concepts
• subject matter

Journals/Notes

At the end of the presentations, you are to submit:

1. A collection of all Summary sheets from the presentations

2. A collection of well organized and useful notes that you recorded/ gathered/ created from the presentations.

This will be assessed separately from your project mark and valued at 5% of your semester.