Local artist Rob Tarbell is a tall guy, easily as long-limbed as Feedback—say, the David Robinson to your arts columnist’s Tim Duncan, a pair of awkward Atlases shrugging to fit into most small spaces. Yet there we stood during the patrons reception for the UVA Art Museum’s reopening—neither of us so much as stooping or slouching or tucking in an arm or leg to fit in the lobby among hundreds of guests.
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UVA Art Museum Director Bruce Boucher (left, facing the crowd) offered a few opening comments to mark the reopening of a newly spacious Bayly building after months of renovation. |
So is the magic of the newly renovated museum, which made every attempt to throw guests around a roomier lobby from the moment they entered the 74-year-old Bayly building. Move left towards the glass-and-aluminum glint of Frank Stella’s roughly 8’ by 10’ “Jerdon’s Courser,” and rebound through the Glenstone photography exhibit? Or right, towards a comparably enormous piece by Emily Kane Kngwarreye, a visitor from UVA’s Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal Art Collection? Overhead, the new Alexander Calder mobile—a loan from the Calder Foundation that arrived a day before the opening—turned at a nearly undetectable pace, a hanging compass for the occasion.
After a few moments’ exploration, museum director Bruce Boucher and Vice Provost for the Arts Elizabeth Hutton Turner revisited the themes of the museum’s expansion—greater exposure to the museum’s permanent collection, space to function as a forum, an abundance of access. Turner shared a famous Calder quote about realism (“‘If you can imagine a thing, conjure it up in space—then you can make it, and tout de suite you’re a realist’”) and introduced special guest Jim Leach, recently appointed chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The bulk of Leach’s comments were inaudible—references to John Locke and the Declaration of Independence, and a mention of Thomas Jefferson and our “right to curiosity.” But Feedback could certainly conjure the explorer’s spirit of the speech and, in Calder’s terms, that makes him something of a realist.
After a stroll through the Glenstone photos—not as hyped as the Jefferson- or Edgar Allan Poe-inspired shows currently on view, but every bit as hype-worthy—Feedback strolled upstairs to join an impromptu tour of the Academical Village exhibit. Gone was the velvet that once segmented the exhibition spaces. The Academical Village show united what was once two rooms and stretched out in imitation of the UVA Lawn, with numbered Rotunda stops. (A bonus feature: The names of the workers that built the Academical Village run along a wall parallel to the exhibit.)
Whether we’re talking about a classic building or another Jefferson-inspired exhibit, the heft of history is occasionally enough to make an art lover’s knees buckle. But space redistributes weight, and the UVA Art Museum now has room to spare and the goods to put it to use. Congratulations, art museum staff—you conjured an idea in space and managed to execute it in fine form. Tout de suite, you’re a bunch of realists! Keep it up.
While we’re talking art openings…
Feedback bumped into artist Russ Warren and Les Yeux du Monde director Lyn Warren at the Bayly, and the couple shared that their new exhibition space—a W.G. Clark-designed building that will function as both a gallery and studio space for Russ—will open to the public on Friday, October 9. The first show? A collection of works by UVA Art Department chair Dean Dass. Looking forward to it, you two.
And for those of you waiting patiently for The Southern Café and Music Hall to open…well, patience is a virtue, and you have a bit more time to feel virtuous, you lucky dogs. Last week, the venue announced that its first weekend of shows—gigs by James McMurtry, Ingrid Michaelson and Jolie Holland, scheduled for September 18-20—would move to Fry’s Spring Beach Club. At present, the next gig—a September 25 show by The Books—is still slated for The Southern.
