Museum Of Art

Before the load was shipped from upstate New York to Brigham Young University’s Museum of Art, they were put in a freezer for two weeks at minus 20 degrees (to kill any bugs) then de-leaved and fire-retarded. Post-delivery, the saplings have been bent and twisted into something strikingly new: “Windswept,” a towering, contorting sculpture that seems unreal. That the piece was erected in only three weeks seems equally unbelievable. “Windswept” will be open for viewing starting Dec. 7, continuing through mid-October of next year. Read more here. Photo by Steve Griffin, Deseret News.

Earlier this year the BYU Museum of Art (MOA) exhibited “Tiffany Glass: Painting with Color and Light.” The exhibition featured windows and lamps made by Tiffany Studios. Louis C. Tiffany, the company’s founder, revolutionized the way stain glass was made. Tiffany’s glass was used to make some of the twentieth century’s most iconic decorative pieces. To read more about the exhibit and Tiffany in BYU Magazine, click here.

The BYU Museum of Art (MOA) is set to open their newest exhibition on Monday. It will feature every Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph since the award was first created in 1942. The exhibition is visiting from the Newseum in Washington, D.C. The MOA is the first venue other than the Newseum to host the exhibition. The exhibition has been one of the Newseum’s most popular. MOA Curator Kenneth Hartvigsen called this a “unique opportunity” and said the photographs are “iconic in a very true sense.”Read more at the Daily Herald.

Brigham Young University Museum of Art (MOA) has entered the conversation on refugees. According to MOA Curator Kenneth Hartvigsen this decision wasn’t accidental or spontaneous. Two years ago the museum staff, including Hartvigsen, started looking for shows and exhibitions that dealt with refugees. The fruit of their efforts are the three exhibitions currently on display through Sept 29: 'DIGNITY: Tribes in Transition,' 'Refugee Trilogy' and 'Albanian Stories.' Hartvigsen hopes these exhibitions will inspire patrons to act and make a difference in their communities. Read more on Deseret News.

72 works illustrate the movement to establish photography as qualified fine art, equal with sculpture, painting and etching.

Divine providence brought Ernst Zimmermann’s Christ in the Temple to the BYU Museum of Art’s (MOA) permanent collection, says director Mark A. Magleby (BA ’89). After being considered lost for most of its existence, the painting emerged on the market just as the MOA prepared a new exhibit contemplating the Savior. Now, thanks to a generous donor, the MOA’s newest religious acquisition is a focal point of not only the exhibit To Magnify the Lord: Six Centuries of Art and Devotion, on display until 2019, but of the museum’s entire collection.

The first BYU Museum of Art Art After Dark of the winter semester is the exhibition opening for the new exhibition 'Embracing Diverse Voices: A Century of African American Art.' The night features performances by Debra Bonner Unity Gospel Choir at 7:30 pm and 8:30 pm. The public is invited to wander the galleries, bring friends, and enjoy the evening at the BYU Museum of Art! See the Facebook event.

The BYU Museum of Art recently acquired plaster casts of Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise.” The original artwork decorates doors on the San Giovanni Baptistery in Florence, Italy, but the MOA will take charge of preserving and displaying the casts in Provo. The relief sculptures depict Old Testament stories on 10 3-foot-square panels, carved by Renaissance sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti in the early 1400s. Former BYU art professor Sharon Gray discovered the casts in a storage room at BYU-Hawaii, where she was a service missionary. She began negotiations, and BYU-Hawaii allowed the MOA to acquire the casts earlier this year. Gray was organizing BYU-Hawaii’s art collection when she made the discovery. She had visited Florence and seen the original “Gates of Paradise” in 1984 on a study abroad program, allowing her to recognize the white plaster heads as soon as she saw them in a crate in Hawaii. Gray made a few phone calls and confirmed the casts’ identity with an archivist. Gray said the plaster panels had been resting in crates in the university’s storage areas for more than 30 years. “It’s a little like Indiana Jones,” Gray said. Jan Fisher, a former art faculty member at BYU-Hawaii, had acquired the casts from Florence and shipped them to Hawaii. There are conflicting stories about when the casts were made and when Fisher acquired them. However, the word “1984” was scrawled across one of the crates underneath Italian packing tape reading “fragile” and “Firenze.” Gray said Fisher originally thought the gates would be a good addition to the Polynesian Cultural Center, but this didn’t work out, and the panels went in storage. “The Renaissance and the Polynesian Cultural Center don’t really mix,” Gray said. “There’s a dissonance there, even though they’re both paradise.” BYU-Hawaii doesn’t have an art museum, so the two universities collaborated to transfer the panels to Provo for proper care, preservation and display. MOA senior registrar Trevor Weight and head fabricator John Adams packed the original 11 boxes into five padded, custom-built crates. The pieces were then freighted to Los Angeles and trucked to Provo, arriving in early July. The casts sat untouched in the museum vaults for several months to allow them to settle and adjust to changes in humidity. The MOA discovered only a few small cracks after unpacking the panels. Weight said he expected some damage from vibrations caused by planes and trucks, but he was surprised at how well the casts transferred. There were also no apparent effects from the change in climate. BYU Museum of Art director Mark Magleby said the “Gates of Paradise” are often viewed as a starting point of the Florentine Renaissance. In the year 1400, Ghiberti competed against six other artists to win the commission for the doors on the south side of the Florence Cathedral baptistery. He earned the commission and created his first set of doors, then was hired to create a second set. Two generations later, Michelangelo studied the second set of doors and nicknamed them the “Gates of Paradise,” a mantra which has been used since. Magleby said the doors significantly influenced Renaissance artists, especially Michelangelo. “He found in those doors the inspiration to do his High Renaissance style,” Magleby said. “Exquisite naturalism in the anatomy of the figure, proportional figures in space; that’s something that was achieved pretty radically in Ghiberti’s second set of doors.” Magleby said the museum has not yet determined how to display the panels. Opinions vary on whether to leave them as white plasters or to coat the surface with a patina to better represent the original work, but Magleby said the first thing the museum will address is the piece’s conservation by sealing the surfaces to protect them from dust and pollution. There are at least two choices when it comes to displaying the panels in the museum, Magleby said. One option is reassembling them vertically like the original doors so viewers can get a sense of the work’s magnitude. Another option is displaying each panel horizontally so viewers can see greater detail and work chronologically through the Old Testament stories. Magleby said the museum would like to leave both options open so viewers can appreciate the panels in different ways at different times. “It was a tremendous act of generosity and faith that BYU-Hawaii would entrust us with these,” Magleby said. “We’re glad that they knew that we are so careful with our objects that they would receive cautious, proactive attention for their preservation, conservation and preparation for viewing.”

This gorgeous stained glass window is a new addition to the BYU Museum of Art permanent collection, now on display in the current exhibition To Magnify the Lord: Six Centuries of Art and Devotion. The 11-foot window was part of the Astoria Presbyterian church in Queens, New York. Six stained glass windows were part of that original construction in 1922, donated by members of the congregation honoring benefactors and members.

The Brigham Young University Museum of Art has hired Dr. Kenneth Hartvigsen as Curator of American Art. The retention of Dr. Hartvigsen was precipitated by the retirement of long-time Curator of American Art, Dr. Marian Wardle, who acted in this role for over 14 years. Dr. Hartvigsen will continue the scholarly legacy of Dr. Wardle, researching and publishing the BYU Museum of Art’s collection, engaging diverse American Studies faculty across campus, and curating exhibitions that support a wide variety of disciplinary curricula. Read more>>>>

The BYU Museum of Art has launched a new exhibit commemorating the centennial anniversary of the U.S. National Park Service. The exhibition, titled “Capturing the Canyons: Artists in the National Parks,” contains around 90 pieces of artwork highlighting western National Parks and the artists who have captured their beauty. Curator Ashlee Whitaker spent three years preparing the exhibition through research and careful selection of compelling pieces of art. She felt it was important to convey the dynamic relationship between the parks and the artists who helped to popularize them.

For the Christian artist, the psalmist’s charge to “magnify the Lord” is naturally achieved through paint, brush, chisel or sculpting tool. The life, teachings and gospel of Jesus Christ have been taught through paintings and sculptures for centuries. READ MORE >>>>>

When a small group of artists assembled themselves in Taos, N.M., in the early 1900s, they had a few goals. Beyond just capturing stunning Southwest landscapes and imagery, they wanted the world to see it – getting their works traveling was an M.O.

The hours of the reserved faculty lot by the Museum of Art have recently changed. The lot will now open weekdays at 6 p.m. instead of 7 p.m. to the general public. This will allow patrons to park closer to the Harris Fine Arts Center on the nights of performances. Additionally, the MOA Cafe is now offering a 10% discount to patrons with tickets to performances on Friday nights in the HFAC. The Cafe is open on Fridays until 9 p.m. so guests are encouraged to eat at the cafe before their show. On Thursday, December 31, the MOA will close at 4 PM. On New Year's Day, the MOA will be closed. Happy New Year! The MOA Cafe will be closed for Christmas Break but will reopen on January 4th.

The security guard’s name was Jeff, and he was moving fast. He was at one end of the Museum of Art on the Brigham Young University campus when he noticed out of the corner of his eye a man in blue jeans, shirt tail out, sunglasses perched atop his head, scruffy beard, getting a little too up close and personal with a painting. And not just any painting, but the celebrated “Nativity,” painted by Brian Kershisnik when he was a visiting professor at BYU in 2006. READ MORE in the Deseret News.>>>>

This winter, the BYU Museum of Art presents American Chronicles, a traveling exhibition showcasing the iconic works of beloved American artist Norman Rockwell. The exhibition runs from Nov. 20, 1015 to Feb. 13, 2016. One of the most popular American artists of the past century, Rockwell (1894-1978) was a keen observer of human nature and a gifted storyteller. For nearly seven decades, while history was in the making all around him, Rockwell chronicled our changing society in the small details and nuanced scenes of ordinary people in everyday life, providing a personalized interpretation–albeit often an idealized one–of American identity. His depictions offered a reassuring visual haven during a time of momentous transformation as our country evolved into a complex, modern society. Rockwell’s contributions to our visual legacy, many of them now icons of American culture, have found a permanent place in our national psyche. RESERVE YOUR TICKETS ONLINE Admission to American Chronicles is free, but due to the anticipated popularity of the exhibition, tickets are required. Patrons can reserve tickets in advance online, and a limited number of standby tickets will also be available on-site on the day of admittance.

BYU’s Museum of Art is continuing with its fall and winter tradition of “Art After Dark,” and this month guests enjoy an evening of food, music and what will be the MOA’s newest exhibit, “No Place Like Home.”