detail, Head of the Worker, Komar and Melamid,
courtesy FUEL Gallery.
detail, Head of the
Worker, Komar and Melamid,
courtesy FUEL Gallery.
Kurt Kiefer, Campus Art Collection
Scattered throughout the University of Washington campus is a diverse collection of artwork grouped officially into a body known as the Campus Art Collection. A large portion of the collection is housed in campus libraries--arguably the most public facilities at the University.
The core of the collection is work donated to the UW by alumni, faculty, staff, and students. Since the late 1970s, the collection has grown dramatically with the inclusion of artwork commissioned by the Washington State Arts Commission's Art in Public Places program. One such piece, Raven Brings Light to this House of Stories, was installed in the Allen Library in 1995 (Library Directions, Vol. 5, No. 3, p.1-2).
Odegaard Undergraduate Library boasts the largest single grouping within the Campus Art Collection. Most of that artwork was collected by the building's architects and installed just before dedication of the facility. This collection is primarily made up of serigraphs (screenprints) printed in the late 1960s and 70s. Art student Katie Mondloch is currently designing a permanent exhibition of these prints by concentrating them on the east side of the second and third floors of OUGL. Her hope is to re-invigorate interest in the works and introduce library users to the important art movements of that era.
The reshuffling of artwork at OUGL is one attempt by Kurt Kiefer, campus art administrator, to make sense of the collection in the context of the University. Until the late 1980s, artwork was collected to either memorialize a person or to decorate the campus. As the works age, the significance of each individual object is often lost on the contemporary campus community. As time and money permits, Kiefer will look for additional changes in the way work on campus is displayed.
Temporary installations offer another means of re-addressing the way art is exhibited on the campus. Recently, the first-floor Suzzallo hallway has been home to two exhibitions of photographs from the Libraries Special Collections and Preservation Division, and a series of wall constructions by artist Doris Chase. Richard Engeman, photographs and graphics librarian, has prepared a series of new photo exhibitions to expand upon the two already in place. (See accompanying article.)
The fourth floor of Allen Library houses two works of art loaned to the University by Seattle's FUEL Gallery. In the hallway leading to the Petersen Room is John Gierlich's Longhouse, and near the entrance to the Libraries administrative offices is Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid's Head of the Worker. Longhouse is a series of constructions meant to be a cross section of a long building. Each cross section is identical except for the rafters, which change from section to section. The rafter forms were derived from a computerized morphing (moving from form to form) starting from a drawing of the place where a simple rafter meets a wall to a drawing of a hand. The result resembles a large architectural model of the morph between a human and a house.
Head of the Worker is a series of four prints by two former Soviet dissident artists now living in the United States. As dissidents, Komar and Melamid were known for their use of the Soviet-sanctioned Social Realist style in lampooning the communist government. Their most current work draws inspiration from Bayonne, New Jersey (the home of their studio). Head of a Worker is from a larger series created to memorialize the workers of the now defunct Bergen Point Brass Foundry in Bayonne.
For more information about campus art, call 685-4869.