Department of Art

Keynote speaker Mike Rugnetta will address the possibilities and positive use of new media

Artist Michael Parker opens up on his success and how BYU impacted him in a Q&A

Three BYU graduates teamed up to bring their influence to the Provo art scene on Friday, Feb. 1 in the Tiny Art Show. The Tiny Art Show is a community project started by BYU graduate McKay Lenker Bayer that brings miniature art to unique spaces. Since December 2018, the Tiny Art Show has showcased different artists who have an interest in miniature art. Read more here.

Joseph Ostraff discusses his work during the November 2018 Faith + Works lecture

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.

Brown’s solo exhibition is currently featured in the A Gallery

“It started with fear,” says Ryan W. Moffett (MA ’05). “Everybody I knew with MS was in a wheelchair.” Moffett, a ceramics teacher at Murray High School, stands in his art studio next to one of his sculptures—a large, ceramic torso and head with minimal details. It’s one of a series that he created in the wake of learning he had multiple sclerosis in 2013. Moffett titled the sculpture Demyelination, after the nervous system–eroding process that occurs with MS. The sculpture is inspired by Bronze Age statues made by island dwellers in the Aegean Sea, but it also departs from the traditional: the top left chunk of the head is cleanly cut away where the brain should be, and a frayed electrical cord protrudes from the right half. Read more here.

BYU art professor Joe Ostraff shares his presentation “We Breathe the Same Air” at the November Faith and Works Lecture Series.

Priscilla Stewart will present her research on place and ecology based education at the National Art Education Association’s National Convention, the premier conference for K12 art educators and university researchers

While installing the new MOA exhibit “Curiouser,” artist Nina Katchadourian and curator Veronica Roberts visited with BYU art students

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 College of Fine Arts and Communications and the College of Engineering teamed up to develop an alternate reality game. Tessera: Light in the Dark will be released in January after over a year of development by professors and students at BYU. Tessera: Light in the Dark is an interactive game about a mysterious collective of historically significant innovators, known as “The Tessera,” hunted by an even more unknown character who goes by “S.” Players navigate real-world and online computational thinking puzzles with the help of the ghosts of these famous men and women who are trying to save everything their think-tank stands for from S’s destructive tendencies. “The normal claim from educators is that the devices that we use, like a cellphone or a computer, is distracting from students’ learning,” said Jeff Sheets, Associate Professor of Communications. “An alternate reality game is a great vehicle to use for teachers because it actually reverses those relationships. Students can play this game while learning and having fun by trying to solve the mystery.” A replayable version of the game that can be condensed into a concise teaching unit will become available for classroom and home use after the live release. Teachers and students will have access to the game, both in and out of the classroom, for no cost. The Tessera players will learn principles of computational thinking (CT), which prepares them to better understand problems in computer science and technology fields. This is not a “learn-to-code” game but students who practice CT can become more confident and interested in studying computer programming. “This makes teachers the heroes because they have helped make learning interesting for students,” said Sheets. “The same tools and techniques that are used to distract students are being used to engage them, and this is the winning formula for teaching kids STEM (Science Technology Engineering & Math) subjects in the future. Students will be able to solve a puzzle while learning how to computer program. And we are bringing a little bit of the Arts to teaching STEM, they even call it STEAM now.” The game targets students ages 13-16, but aims to get more girls and minorities interested in STEM subjects. This game could potentially encourage more minorities and girls to become involved in STEM classes and careers in the future by showing them the basics of computational thinking. This game will show students that they already have the skills for computational thinking, including coding, and can encourage them to pursue STEM subjects in the future. The game developers designed a trading card game to go along with the online game because they wanted students to have an all-immersive experience. Players can use famous scientists, engineers, artists and mathematicians to claim innovations and gain higher points to win with the trading cards. Each card has a code that can be used in the online game to play against online opponents around the world. This game is designed to be both educational and fun. BYU faculty members have been working with students over the last year to develop this game. Over 30 students from various programs such as illustration, design, advertising, public relations, animation and film have worked together to create the content and to design the game. “The design of the game is two fold,” said Connor King, BFA Graphic Design student. “There is the puzzle and level design, as well as the art design and player experience, both of which are linked together.” Jeff Parkin, a BYU Theatre and Media Arts professor, and Jared Cardon, owner of partner group Tinder Transmedia developed the overall story arc of the game. Students involved created the levels, puzzles, gameplay and a majority of the art included. “After the levels were built, it was tested to see if things broke, and of course, if it was fun! If our game isn't fun, there is no purpose to making it,” said King. “It might look beautiful, and run without any errors, but if it isn't fun, we missed the mark.” Utah locals have the opportunity to attend a launch party for the game on Tuesday, January 17 from 5-7 pm in the Amber Room at the Museum of Ancient Life at Thanksgiving Point. There will also be a concurrent launch with program partner Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley. The Computer History Museum will host a real-life version of the game in conjunction with the virtual game. To learn more and to receive updates on the game, register on http://thetessera.org.

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.”

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 >>>>>

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.

Shaun Parry will be presented with a BYU Alumni Achievement Award on Thursday, Oct. 8. Prior to the award reception, Parry will give a lecture entitled “Impossible Dreams I Didn’t Know Enough To Dream.” The lecture will be held in the Madsen Recital Hall at 11 a.m. Admission is free and the lecture is open to the public.

The MOA’s new exhibit, “Moving Pictures: C.C.A. Christensen’s Mormon Panorama,” showcases a unique set of American folk paintings that occasionally show up in various LDS literature. Collectively, the works carry far more significance.