As the saying goes, "Every dog has his day." Well, the dog formerly at the center of Irwin Berman‘s exhibit at the University of Virginia Art Museum has left the school with a steaming, heaping pile of orange and blue turds on its paws. And the artist tells C-VILLE he has no problem with that, though his collaborators may see it differently.
As part of his show "Sedentary Pleasures," which opens at UVA Art Museum on Friday night, May 2, Berman—an alumnus of the Medical School and a sculptor—crafted a four-legged milking stool piled high with fake dog droppings. After learning about "Seal," the canine mascot of UVA until his death in 1953, Berman wrote and produced a three-and-a-half minute short film that mythologizes the stool’s origin. For that project he had help from UVA alums Michael Wartella and Sam Retzer and associate professor of art William Bennett. In the film, an enormous dog’s face devours a Cavalier figure and then rains multi-colored shit down from the sky; blue and orange coils amass on top of a stool that resembles the piece in Berman’s show.
"This was all supposed to be part of this show, to be shown at the [UVA Art] Museum," says Bennett during a phone interview. "Somehow, somebody in the University administration—not sure who, how or why—decided this film wasn’t appropriate for exhibition." Berman’s original intention, according to Bennett, was to give the film away in exchange for donations to the UVA Art Museum or Department. A few weeks ago, however, Bennett says that UVA pulled both the stool and the film from the exhibit.
In a follow-up call to C-VILLE, Berman said that The Great Seal was simply one of four pieces not selected for the final exhibit; an e-mail from the artist clarified that the grounds for this decision "reflected sound curatorial judgments by the Museum Director and Curator," Elizabeth Hutton Turner. As previously reported, former museum director Jill Hartz was removed from her position and replaced by Turner, the vice provost for the arts at UVA.
Instead, the stool and the film will be on display at Les Yeux du Monde. Both can be viewed during the gallery’s normal hours throughout May, and a copy of the DVD may be obtained in exchange for donations of $100 to the UVA Art Museum or Art Department.
UVA to Berman: Shit happens. Sculptor relocates sculpture and film to Les Yeux du Monde.
