Learning to love modern art

WASHINGTON -- "You really like that modern stuff? It's so cold and intellectual. Who can even understand what those kinds of artists say?" For an absurdly long time -- the better part of 100 years, now -- lovers of the modern have had to mount a rear-guard action against those kinds of questions. Even Ikea still has to seed its modern displays with spindles and chintz.

But a show that opened this week at the Corcoran Gallery of Art ought to convert even the die-hard detractors. "Modernism: Designing a New World, 1914-1939," on tour from the great Victoria and Albert Museum in London, includes more than 400 stunning images and objects that make the argument themselves: Except perhaps for the time around 1500 in Renaissance Italy, no moment in Western art has had the breadth and depth and simple world-changing greatness of modernism.

A skeptic doesn't have to take an expert's word on this. Just looking at the objects at the Corcoran should do the trick.

I dare anyone to walk into the Corcoran lobby and resist the luscious, aerodynamic sweep of the modernist car that fills it, dubbed the "77A" and made in Czechoslovakia by the Tatra company in 1938. It shows how modernism, born just before World War I as a radical movement in fine art, transformed the way the world around us has looked since. A sleek Acura coupe couldn't exist at all without precedents like the 77A.

Behind the car, marching up both sides of the Corcoran's grand staircase, are a dozen copies of Gerrit Rietveld's "Red Blue" chair, which was perfected around 1923 and is now one of the great icons of modern design.

The Dutchman's chairs register as superb sculpture: They define space using a bare few uprights and horizontals in black, then breach it with slender diagonals -- the slanting chair seat and its back -- in two primal, primary colors. But for all its sculptural impact, anyone who has lived with the "Red Blue" can vouch for its surprising comfort. (I know one amateur woodworker who has copied the chair in every size to seat grandkids of all ages, as well as full size, in pressure-treated lumber, to guarantee the comfort of her garden furniture.) Like all the best of modern design, the Red Blue wants to inspire, but it also wants to work.

Most importantly, even eight decades after its birth, the Red Blue can still energize a space that's as imposing as the Corcoran's neoclassical atrium. A great modernist chair doesn't just fill the room it's in, as decoration, the way most earlier furniture does; even after all these years of familiarity, the Red Blue still has the impact to compete with architecture and change the way any room feels. If it came out tomorrow, the Red Blue would still win big play in the design press.

At the top of that chair-lined staircase, the Corcoran's lovely rotunda has been reserved for a very few of modernism's greatest creations, picked out with spotlights.

There is a room-size model of Vladimir Tatlin's 1920 "Monument to the Third International," which, had it been built, would have been 100 stories tall. Again we see art and design in perfect balance. The Russian's model works as an exciting piece of modernist sculpture: It has an amazing distillation of upward, sideways and spiral thrusts, like nothing ever done before. As an idea for a building, it profoundly rethinks the relationship between a supporting skeleton and the spaces such a skeleton can hold.

In a show on modernism, a movement whose tentacles reached everywhere, even an object as modest as a vase can get big play. Alvar Aalto's 1936 "Savoy" vase, mold-blown in Finland of undulating glass, clearly deserves its spotlighted place in the Corcoran rotunda: It's been in production almost since its birth, and now lives on mantels all around the world. Rather than quoting directly from nature, as the leaves and fronds decorating so many earlier designs had done, Aalto's vase evokes the look and principles of nature, in the abstract. The gently rippled sides of his vessel recall natural processes and forms -- the surf, erosion and tide-washed sand as well as cellular growth and aquatic plants -- without citing any single one of nature's creations.

The themes introduced in the Corcoran's atrium and rotunda play out across the rest of this massive show, which takes up very nearly the entire museum.

After a kind of "antechamber" that highlights the role cubism played in launching the modern movement, we're swept into spacious galleries that set out the full sweep of modernism.

There are rooms devoted to most of the great movements, moments and makers in modernism -- Russian constructivism, Italian futurism, Germany's great Bauhaus school and others.

The show also includes sections devoted to how modernism played out under the political systems of different countries: Swedish socialism, Italian fascism, German Nazism, Soviet communism and American capitalism.

Then there are themed displays, on subjects such as "The Machine, Sitting on Air" (a thrilling wall covered floor to ceiling in experiments in cantilevered seating), "Modernism and Nature" and "Mass Market Modernism."

Anyone who spends the time this show deserves will leave feeling a deep connection with modernism, and a renewed love for it. They may also feel a new affection for the Corcoran, a museum that's been languishing for years. Those who've doubted that new director Paul Greenhalgh could pull this survey off -- this critic was among them -- will have to eat their hats.

And still the show isn't anything like comprehensive. Especially in the fine arts, there's more great modernism out there than any single exhibition could present.

The exhibition makes the standard argument that modernism is really about imagining utopia, then using new design to get us there. That's got some problems. There's the fact that cubism, the home ground of modernism, was hardly a utopian movement -- or no more than any artistic movement that believes it has advanced from what was done before. And that some of Europe's very first minimal, modern abstractions were by dadaists Sophie Taeuber and Jean Arp, who were more interested in anarchy and the absurd than in forging a promising future for mankind.

More crucially, it's not clear that such social and political ideas are enough to cause any particular kind of art or design. After all, is bent chrome more inherently utopian than a bunch of floral decoration, straight out of the Garden of Eden? The hand-carving of the Arts and Crafts movement was built on the same utopian ideals as machine-age modernism.

A cause that can have almost any outcome doesn't explain much.

The sheer variety of ideas and warring "-isms" on display in this show reveal that modernism can't be tied down to any one or two or 10 of them. In fact the glory of modernism, like the glory of many watersheds in art, is that it produced a single set of potent forms that could be used to do so very many different things.

That's what this show proves.

Modernism provides a powerful toolbox of possibilities, helping us say and mean a thousand different things.

The Swiss architect Le Corbusier once said that a great modern house ought to be considered a "machine for living." The modernism that informs it should be thought of as a great "machine for thinking" -- one of the greatest that we've ever built.

The Corcoran's new show lets us hear it whir.

No nude drawings, no art credit

Muslim student's refusal uncovers debate

Aruba Mahmud, 22, an honours visual arts student at London's University of Western Ontario, drew her friends clothed rather than remain in the classroom with her professor and fellow students who were sketching nude models.

Ms. Mahmud, a practising Muslim who wears a hijab, was allowed to draw her friends clothed as an alternative project to nude-model drawing -- she did stay once in the classroom with a nude model and found it very uncomfortable -- but only in early level courses.

At higher levels of instruction in painting and drawing, the university administration enunciated a clear policy: Draw nudes or don't take the course. Refuse to draw nudes once you're in the course and you fail.

Ms. Mahmud brought a letter from the university's Muslim chaplain stating that prolonged exposure to the nude body of a person who was not one's marital partner was contrary to Islamic teaching. She was willing to take a zero for the part of the course that involved nude drawing.

But the university stood firm.

"That's what really got me," Ms. Mahmud said.

"It seems so very all-or-nothing."

She recalled becoming emotional and starting to cry as she pleaded with her professor and chair of the department to be allowed to take the course without drawing nudes.

In any event, she graduates this spring without nude drawing in her résumé. "I don't think it's such an essential part of the work," she said.

A report on discrimination against Muslim students made public this week by the Canadian Federation of Students calls it "one of the most egregious stories" of a university refusing to accommodate diversity.

Kathleen Okruhlik, UWO's dean of arts and humanities, sees it differently, and takes issue with the accuracy of aspects of the student federation's report. In the past, she said, it has been conservative Christians asking for exemption from certain instruction. Now it is Muslims.

The issue touches on a heated controversy in Quebec under the heading of accommodement raisonnable, or reasonable accommodation, for religious minorities. Premier Jean Charest has created a public inquiry to examine how far the majority should go in a liberal pluralistic democracy to accommodate minorities.

Ms. Okruhlik said the university allows students to do substitute life drawing projects in introductory courses because it is recognized that, if they don't get through the introductory course, they will be barred from going further.

"But for advanced courses for drawing and painting, we decided we couldn't alter the curriculum for Muslim students or anybody else. It doesn't keep anybody out of visual arts. It will keep some people later on out of specific drawing and painting courses. In those courses, drawing from life models is absolutely critical. It's such an important part of the tradition to be able to represent the human body."

Ms. Okruhlik said she and her academic colleagues have dealt with Christian students who don't want to read Henry Miller (who wrote detailed accounts of sexual experiences) or literature that portrays homosexuality favourably.

"And we say to those students, 'No, we value diversity and plurality, but we also value academic freedom. So if you want to take this course, you have to read the assigned reading,' she said.

"It's hard for us to see how equal treatment means we can say to some students, 'No, I'm sorry you have to read that novel that portrays homosexuality in a favourable light -- but, no, you don't have to do that drawing.' "

Art students learn to draw from the human form

A line of charcoal on paper mirrored the curve of Cheri Ewing's bare back. She sat still and naked at the front of the class as art students sketched her.

She felt perfectly comfortable there in her own skin, aside from the tingling sensation she began to get in her foot from sitting on it too long.

It's not about being nude, said Ewing, a Merced native. It's about art. And sometimes the hardest part is just sitting still.

Some people initially react to the idea of nude models with surprise or embarrassment. But local artists and teachers say they are an essential part of learning to portray the human form.

"Artists don't think of it as a sexual thing," said Freda Rasmussen, Merced College arts division secretary. "It's about the beauty of the human body. It's something artists throughout the ages have been doing."

Why do it?

For about 10 years, Ewing has worked as a live, nude model for various art classes in the area, including Merced College, the Merced Multicultural Arts Center and Modesto Junior College.

She began the job while attending Merced College. A photography teacher told her about the school's need for figure drawing class models.

The pay now is about $14 an hour.

"I was slightly hesitant, but not too much because I had been at the other end of the easel," she said.

Ewing also creates her own landscapes and portraits.

Not a particularly self-conscious person, the slim 40-something understood artists' need to see the human form without hindrance.

"Clothing bunches and is not as nice to draw," said Elizabeth Glass, 22, a student who sketched Ewing in Merced College's figure drawing class. "If the model is nude there is more of a sense of the dimensions."

Who can do it?

There is no age or body-type requirement for this kind of work, said Lori diMuro, an artist who teaches the college class to a range of skill levels.

Each week her students sketch a live model, which diMuro says is an essential part of the learning process.

"The most fashionable figure is not necessarily the most interesting to draw," she said. "The more curves, age, makes for an interesting drawing."

But the model must be able to sit or stand in poses for extended periods of time -- from about 30 seconds to 20 minutes -- which can be a lot harder than it looks.

"Most people who try any kind of modeling are surprised by how difficult it really is," said Jamie Brzezinski, the college's arts division chair. "When you start that pose, there might be a slight bit of discomfort, then a raging cramp."

Corina Brazil, 79, has known this for many decades. She began modeling nude for classes at California State University, Stanislaus, around 1964.

"I saw an ad in the art department and I got real brave one day and I went in," said Brazil, a Gustine native now living in Merced. "At first I was nervous, especially when I saw people I knew. But I've never been very self-conscious."

She got paid $4 an hour back then.

She continues to model nude occasionally for classes at the Multicultural Arts Center.

"My son was kind of shocked," she said. "My grandchildren didn't want to see the (pictures) ... but my family is OK with it now."

Modeling became more strenuous for Brazil as she aged, so she does it less than she used to. But she is still comfortable posing nude and believes it to be an important part of art.

"The thing about the human body is that there are so many textures," she said. "It's not like you automatically know how to draw it."

She tries to keep her mind busy while she is posing.

"Sometimes I pray," Brazil said. "Sometimes I plan out my house. A song will go through my head. You don't want to start thinking unpleasant thoughts."

Not just for the ladies

Although women are often seen more in nude paintings than men, it is important to learn how to draw both, diMuro said.

"Men's bodies are obviously different," she said. "It's nice to have a wide variety."

Dave Hill, 46, began modeling while attending college at Washington University. A teacher asked him to pose for a drawing class.

"It sounded like an easy job," he said. "When I got done filling out the paperwork she said, 'You're going to have to go ahead and get undressed.' I didn't know what I thought about that but I did it. It was fun."

Hill, a Hayward resident, continues to model about two times a week for Bay Area art groups, and occasionally at Merced College.

He got over his embarrassment quickly and now considers modeling a relaxing activity, as long as the poses aren't too difficult.

"I think there are three views of male nude models," he said. "One is 'that's really cool.' Second, there are people who are uncomfortable seeing you as an object."

Then there are people who wonder why anyone would do it.

"If you like to be nude, it's a good job," Hill said.

Comfort on both sides of easel

Of course, taking off your clothes for a class can take a lot of courage, say art teachers and models. But people get over their nervousness.

"Apparently they do because no one bolts for the door," diMuro said. "Some don't have any problems with it, some are shy. The atmosphere of the class is very professional -- nothing unseemly is tolerated."

The college is currently looking for more people to pose for the figure drawing class. Regulars still come in, but it's not unusual for a new potential model to sign up and then back out before class.

Ewing is one of Merced College's regular models.

She said taking vocal lessons was a great way to prepare for posing nude.

"When you sing, it's like standing there naked in front of everyone," she said. "You are baring your soul. It's almost more intimidating."

However, student artists often get self-conscious as well, she added. They are also put on the spot when someone else examines their work.

"Some (of the pictures) are flattering, some make me want to go home and work out," Ewing said.

After about 20 students drew her with charcoal or conte crayon, their work sat on easels around the center of the classroom for all to see.

Kerrie Curtis, 21, an art major, said that while it might seem awkward to have the model look at her artwork, it didn't bother her.

None of the students said they were particularly surprised or uneasy about the nudity in class.

After all, it is a figure drawing class and artists sign up to better learn the lines of the human form, Glass said.

Before student David Carrillo, 20, saw a live, nude model in art class, he thought it might be uncomfortable.

"But it was cool and I just went with the flow," he said. "It made me see how other people's figures are all different."

Want to model?

The art of feminism

What is feminist art?

Is it a photo of a Hasidic man fondling his very real — and very naked — female breast?

How about a photo of a two silver-haired women dancing on an ice-covered lake?

Is it a studio-apartment-sized, 48-foot-long dinner table laid with place settings for 1,038 historically significant women?

Or is it just an excuse to bring some new art to town?

The question has gained a new resonance as the Brooklyn Museum opens its new Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, an 8,300-square-foot exhibition space and education center that will bring Judy Chicago’s gargantuan piece, “The Dinner Party,” together with Oreet Ashery’s controversial gender-bending photo of a breast-holding Hasid and Milena Dopitova’s wintery ode to aging womanhood.

A landmark event for the art world, the center is the first of its kind. But why is it needed?

“Feminism is something that we still live and breathe, even though women today might not be conscious of it,” chief curator Dr. Maura Reilly told GO Brooklyn.

“The Dinner Party,” created by Chicago in 1979, is the feather in the cap of the new center — and its original inspiration.

Chicago’s iconic piece — a larger-than-life play on the historic exclusion of women from the “table” of culture and the significant role they have played, regardless — has shaped much of the last two decades of conversation about feminist art.

In that respect, it is fitting that the massive table serves as a foundation for the rest of the center’s programming, allowing for a rotating exhibition focusing on women “seated” at it.

Remaining gallery space will highlight larger themes, the first being “Global Feminisms.”

This inaugural show, curated by Reilly and her mentor, famed feminist art critic Linda Nochlin, brings together the work of contemporary women — all born after 1960 — from 49 countries, including artists who openly identify as feminists and others who are torn about the label.

Ashery is the controversial British-Israeli multi-media artist behind three of the center’s most overtly political images, including the shot of herself dressed as Hasidic man looking down at her obviously female breast. (See the controversial photo.)

“I grew up in Jerusalem,” she told GO Brooklyn. “I would visit Orthodox neighborhoods with my Dad and be attracted to the lifestyle, but at the same time realize that I would be excluded.”

By dressing in the traditional garb of Orthodox men, she said she is challenging that community’s strict gender codes and encouraging “dialogue.”

But already, there are signs that starting that dialogue won’t be quite so quiet. In a vague reminder of the museum’s controversial 2000 show “Sensation” — which featured a painting of the Virgin Mary peppered with butterflies cut out of a porno magazine — religious believers are already complaining about the Sackler’s take on feminism.

In the Orthodox neighborhood just one subway stop from the Brooklyn Museum, some Hasidic men singled out the Ashery photo.

“I don’t think it’s appropriate,” said Yakov Edelman.

Another Orthodox Crown Heights resident who identified himself only as Aaron called Ashery’s breast-and-pais portrait “vulgar.”

“It’s like putting a knife in a beautiful painting of a rose,” he said. “Both sides of it could be beautiful, but both are ruined by putting them together.”

Even inside the feminist art world there have been some objections to the new center.

Jenni Sorkin, a columnist for “Frieze Art,” feared that without a permanent acquisition program — though Reilly assured us that one is in the works — the center will have trouble attracting artists.

“Maybe [artists like] Lisa Yusavage or Elizabeth Peyton will surprise me and agree to be in a group show at the Sackler Center,” she wrote recently. “But given the option, I suspect it will be artists of a lesser stature.”

Another feminist artist raised questions about the lack of age diversity at the center (see “Sacklash,” above).

And still another critic pointed out that Elizabeth Sackler, for whom the gallery is named, is a prominent collector of feminist art — making the new gallery a great showroom for pieces that she hopes will increase in value, just as “Sensation” did for the Charles Saatchi–owned pieces it spotlighted.

Chicago, however, believes that critics will be pleasantly surprised by what they find at the new Center.

“The Brooklyn Museum is looking at how to make a more diverse, welcoming institution that reflects the multiplicity of points of view,” she told GO Brooklyn.

Sackler also believes that there is no better time to incite this shift in the perception of feminist art and of the women’s movement as a whole.

“Now is an exciting time to be a woman,” she says. “For the first time, we might vote for a female president. A woman is Speaker of the House. I think we are right on target.”

Seattle Erotic Art Festival gets nude awakening

The big art show that celebrates human sexuality and carnal expression is back in the flesh.

Now in its fifth year, the Seattle Erotic Art Festival has grown in popularity, attracting more than 3,000 patrons at the peak of its run.

The show has become a welcome part of a Pacific Northwest community known for its open and liberal embrace -- or so the festival organizers thought.

Then they tried to print 1,000 program catalogs for the 2007 show -- and got a nude awakening.

A dozen or so printing companies across the region refused to do the job.

"It really surprised us," said Anna Hurwitz, the festival's producer.

A couple of years ago, festival organizers got e-mails from people who suggested that the art was "blasphemous" and "sinful." But they say they've never had a real emergency surrounding the show's content or catalogs -- until now.

The printing companies -- festival organizers are withholding names -- have every right to refuse business.

That the companies shied away, though, goes to show that the Northwest has a liberal patina that covers up a reactionary streak -- especially when it comes to sex and nudity.

Some people wig out at the slightest whiff of erotica or bare flesh.

A recap of recent episodes from Sex and the Emerald City:

Seattle officials cracked down on "dirty dancing" in strip clubs, invoking 4-foot rules to keep daylight between dancers and patrons, even though a sane majority of Seattle voters didn't want such restrictions.

In Fremont, the longtime epicenter of Seattle counterculture, not everyone loves the nude cyclists who ride in the annual Solstice Parade. Some would prefer that the bicyclists in the buff put on Speedos -- or something.

It was just a matter of time before the erotic art festival felt a chill.

Organizers first reached out to a print shop in Portland. That shop was too small to handle the size of the job and decided to outsource it. But when it reached out to other companies they said no, pointing to some of the racy images.

The Portland shop suggested that the Seattle organizers look closer to home.

They did -- with the same result. At least one Seattle-area print shop said nope because of a tight deadline. At another shop some employees were so turned off by the material that they threatened to walk if he company printed the 48-page catalog, said Larie Smoyer, who is on the festival organizing committee.

Eventually, a Seattle company agreed to do the job.

The catalogs were shipped out and arrived just in time at The Fenix, the Sodo site of the festival.

I dropped by the hall on First Avenue South this week to see what all the fuss was about. As soon as I walked in, I was greeted by a hanging chandelier of green bananas and leaves.

The glass, fashioned as fruit, was part of a handsome light piece. Dale Chihuly popped into mind -- that is, until my sex festival escort explained the bananas were, ah, symbolic.

Walls in the exhibition hall were adorned with beautiful and provocative art, including one photograph, "Of the Deep," showing a topless woman whose torso was draped by a real octopus.

Yes, there was other stuff on display -- stuff that could make a guy go, "Yikes!" Stuff I cannot mention in a family paper. Stuff featured in the catalog.

Such button-pushing creations make one empathize with folks at the skittish printing companies -- but only to a point. Not all the art in the catalog or in the exhibit is guaranteed to offend, unless you think of the unclothed human body that way.

Taking in the display as a whole made me think: Isn't the goal of artistic expression to provoke thought and spark dialogue, even if some of the art makes some people uncomfortable?

Festival organizers call the display art.

Critics may think of it as porn.

To me, the only obscene thing in full view is the degree to which some people get in a twist over anything remotely sexual.

Before I left the building, I had one question: Which brave Seattle company dared to print the catalogs? Lips remain sealed -- and with good reason.

It turns out the company wants to be anonymous because it has ties to big bread-and-butter, conservative clients, including church groups that might take offense.

Say amen to the company for at least stepping up wholly.

MARILYN MANSON: Florida Art Exhibition Scheduled For April - Mar. 6, 2007

Marilyn Manson is exhibiting his latest paintings at Space 39 Modern & Contemporary Gallery in Fort Myers, Florida from April 2 to April 17. A private reception will be held March 31.

Austin Scaggs of Rolling Stone magazine's "Smoking Section" recently got a preview of MARILYN MANSON's new album, "Eat Me, Drink Me", at a Los Angeles-area recording studio. Scaggs writes that he was "blown away" by the CD, which includes a six-minute epic, "If I Was Your Vampire", with the lyric "The hole is where the heart is." "If anyone thought Manson was down for the count, think again," raves Scaggs.

"Eat Me, Drink Me" is tentatively due for release this spring and will follow up 2003's "The Golden Age of Grotesque". Manson told MTV.com in the fall of 2005 that he expected his next record to be "something above and beyond and different — sonically, emotionally — than anything I've done."

Manson recently asked the court to block any future claim for spousal support by his estranged wife, burlesque dancer Dita Von Teese. According to TMZ.com, which obtained court documents, Manson has also requested that Teese pay for her own lawyers in the couple's divorce proceedings. Also in the documents, Manson claims that he and Von Teese split up on Halloween, while Von Teese maintains that they separated on Christmas Eve. Both have cited "irreconcilable differences" as the reason for the breakup of the marriage.

Artist traslates hope into vibrant exhibit

Thursday, March 22, 2007

She remembers the huge mouse she drew, along with tiny footprints that trailed behind it, representing that in the library, you have to be as quiet as a mouse.

Since that contest, Rasmussen was hooked on art.

For her, it was a talent that came naturally. Her mother was a commercial artist who never worked for money, always doing work for church or schools. When she had work to get done, she often sat her seven children in front of pieces of white cardboard and markers in order to keep them occupied.

The ability to express themselves through works of art ran through her family, she said, as each one of her siblings was blessed with their own gifts; one is very good at caligraphy, another is great with pottery, some are great cooks and others are very crafty.

As evident in herself and her siblings, Rasmussen says that she believes everyone has their own way of expressing themselves, but it comes out in different ways.

For her, it's always been about art.

In high school, she made it her goal to take as many art classes as she could, often ending up with extra credits just so she could fit it in every semester.

In college she shifted her focus slightly, majoring in fine arts and graphic design, but also taking many drawing classes. After graduation, she scored a job designing brochures for an engineering firm and then moved to upstate New York and found herself designing T-shirts for a T-shirt factory.

But when life as a graphic designer wasn't working out as she expected, she went back to college and got her master's in elementary education, all the while maintaining an active interest in art.

Growing up, Rasmussen said she learned many things from her mother, but "also learned many things not to do from her."

She recalls her mother's nickname of "the gypsy" for her vibrant outfits and believes that's where her love of color came from.

"People who see my work always comment on the colors," she says, boasting canvas after canvas of bright tropical flowers and bold cityscapes painted in mostly pastels or watercolors.

Those vibrant pastels and watercolors can be seen now through April 26 at Gallery -30- in the Sewickley Herald office during an exhibit appropriately entitled, "Long Road Back."

Rasmussen admits that she's been in a "state of transition that has lasted a few years."

Over these last few years, she became a single parent and in order to create more income for herself and her daughter, she opened a coffee shop and art gallery on the first floor of her Carnegie home and across the street from a friend's gallery, the Third Street Gallery.

However, only four months after she opened her business, disaster struck -- the remnants of Hurricane Ivan.

She remembers standing on her front porch watching water spilling over from the creek. She ran over to her friend's gallery across the street to help pull artwork from the walls to save them from being ruined, but when she went back to her shop to get sandbags from the basement in an effort to keep water out, she noticed that she, too, had been a victim.

Three feet of water invaded her first floor.

That night, she recalls sitting in her daughter's upstairs bedroom watching from a window as cars were lifted by the rising water. Her daughter, she says, was with her father at the time.

"It never occurred to me that the building could collapse and I could die," she says. "It was so surreal."

Rasmussen ended up losing 20 paintings in the flood and spent three months cleaning the first floor.

Although the water receded and she was able to get the shop and gallery back up and running, the effects of Ivan remained.

Many of the businesses closed as a result of the flooding and in turn, many people simply didn't venture to Carnegie anymore. Hurricane Ivan changed the face of the town.

Because she wasn't busy, Ras-mussen, however, was able to rebuild some of the inventory she had lost in the flood.

But with business still down and following the death of her friend from the gallery across the street, she decided to close the gallery and shop last January.

Since then, she has taken on many jobs to support herself and six-year-old Mirra, including teaching classes at Sweetwater Center for the Arts, where she is able to forge both her love of art and her love for teaching.

Ceramic Artist Fong Choo Visits, Lectures

LEXINGTON, Ky. (March 22, 2007) − The University of Kentucky Department of Art will welcome ceramic artist Fong Choo to campus this Friday as its next artist/speaker in this year's Visiting Artists and Scholars Series. During his residence, Choo will visit and work with UK art students, faculty and staff, and address the public and art department majors at a free lecture scheduled for noon Friday, March 23, in Room 118 of the Whitehall Classroom Building.

Choo, a native of Singapore, earned his bachelor's degree in business at Warren Wilson College and his master's degree in ceramics at the University of Louisville. He has been a resident artist and adjunct faculty at Bellarmine University since 1990. His emphasis is tightly focused on miniature teapots, and his decade of work on these pieces shows his evolution in color, design and form.

Choo's work has been featured in various publications and group and solo shows across the U.S. at galleries like New York City's Aaron Faber Gallery and Philadelphia's Works Gallery.

Over the past 10 years, the artist has received numerous awards at such shows as the Smithsonian Craft Show, the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show and the American Craft Exposition. In 2006 alone, he earned Best in Show nods at the Peoria Fine Art Fair and the American Craft Exposition, as well as a first place award at the St. Louis Art Fair.

A recent article in the Chicago Tribune describes Choo as "a force, both professionally and personally," noting international recognition for the artist's miniature teapots reminiscent of the Yixing style of pottery dating to the 14th Century.

The Department of Art in the UK College of Fine Arts sponsors the Visiting Artists and Scholars Series, which brings nationally and internationally known artists to UK to lecture in weeklong residencies.

While at UK, Choo will visit with art students and faculty, participate in classes, as well as provide critiques to students. Choo's residency includes Friday's free public lecture, which will detail his life's work and conclude with a question and answer session following his presentation.

Salvador Dalí Museum Celebrates 25 Years In St. Petersburg

This March marks the 25 th anniversary of the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, which will kick off its Silver Jubilee with a celebration on Wednesday, March 7. Visitors are invitedtojoin Dalí Museum staff, members and supporters as they toast St. Petersburg’s prized institution with Dalí’s favorite beverage–Spanish cava.

The celebratory program will begin at 12:30. Birthday cake will also be served and visitors will be able to view the Surreal Birthday Cake competition with cakesprepared by St. Petersburg Culinary Arts students.

To trace the roots of the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, you have to start in, of all places, Cleveland. In 1942, A year after their marriage, a young Ohio couple bought themselves a belated wedding present—a painting with images of limp figures, a spider and ants on a barren landscape representing the exile caused by World War II. Not the most obvious wedding present, but to the couple it was the first piece of what would become one of the most acclaimed collections of a single modern artist in the world and would lead to a 45-year friendship with the artist.

The Morse Collection Shortly before they were married in 1942, Cleveland industrialist, A. Reynolds Morse and Eleanor Reese attended a traveling Salvador Dalí retrospective at the Cleveland Museum of Art. Thrilled by the show, intrigued by the artist’s subject matter, and impressed by his draftsmanship, they bought their first painting a year later.

DaddyLonglegs of the Evening—Hope!(1940) began a collection that would culminate in the early 1970s with the purchases ofThe Hallucinogenic Toreador(1969-70),The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus (1958-59) andThe Ecumenical Council(1960) to complete the most comprehensive collection of original Dalí work in the world.

After purchasingDaddy Longlegs, the Morses arranged to meet Dalí and his wife Gala and they quickly became part of the artist’s inner circle of friends. As friends, they frequently attended gallery openings and previews, affording them the first choice of Dalí’s new works.

Until 1971, the Morses displayed their entire Dalí collection in their Cleveland home. When they agreed to loan over 200 pieces to a New York retrospective in1965, they realized that their collection deserved a home of its own. The first Dalí Museum was built adjacent to their Injection Molding Supply Company office building in Beachwood, Ohio. It opened amid great fanfare in 1971—with Dalí himself presidingover the opening—but quickly outgrew its new home.

As they began a nationwide search for a permanent home, the Morses offered to donate the entire multi-million dollar collection to any museum willing to keep all of the artwork and archival material intactto preserve the collection’s historical integrity. Although several institutions were interested in receiving the works, no museum came forward to accept the gift on those terms. Dalí Comes to St. Petersburg TheWall Street Journalreported the Morse’sunusual situation on January 18, 1980 in an article titled; “U.S. Art World Dillydallies Over Dalís.” St. Petersburg, Florida attorney James W. Martin read the article and convinced community leaders to contact the Morses with the bold idea that the collection belonged in St.

Petersburg. Following his initial contact, Martin enlisted the enthusiastic support of community leaders and city officials, with the result that the Morses first agreed to visit St. Petersburg, and eventually agreed to donate the collection for benefit of the people of the State of Florida. In addition to showcasing Dali’s work, the museum would be a flagship for Spanish and Catalan heritage and the location—on Bayboro Harbor—was selected by Mr. Morse in part for its resemblance to Cadaqués, Dalí’s childhood home on the Mediterranean Sea.

The Salvador Dalí Museum opened to the public on March 7, 1982 and has attracted millions of visitors from around the world (over 50% of its visitors are from outside the State of Florida). The collection now consists of 2,140 total pieces including 95 oil paintings and over 100 watercolors and drawings. Highlights of the initial permanent collection include:Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory(1952-54),The Weaning of Furniture-Nutrition(1934),The Basket of Bread(1926),Still Life (Sandia)(1924),Self-Portrait (Figueres) (1921),Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire(1940),Nature Morte Vivante (Still Life–Fast Moving) (1956), andEggs on a Plate Without a Plate(1932).

The Museum continues to acquire new Dalí works to supplement the Morse’s original collection. Of the many acquisitions since the Museum has been in St. Petersburg are three impressive oil paintings—all of them among Dalí’s large master works:Galacidalacidesoxiribunucleicacid (1963), Portrait of My Dead Brother (1963), and Gala Contemplating the Mediterranean Sea Which at Twenty Meters Becomes A Portrait of Abraham Lincoln(1976).

The Museum has one of the most dynamic gift shops in the museum world,something Dalí himself, with his gift for marketing, would undoubtedly approve of. Books and educational materials are the top sellers, allowing visitors to dig deeper into Dalí’s life and work. Part of the Museum’s mission is to educate the public and promote understanding, enjoyment and scholarly examination of art through the exhibition of works by Salvador Dalí and artists of similar vision. To that end, the Museum welcomes 10,000 students in school groups for free each year. Additional programs have been developed as well to serve the many families with children who visit. Special kid-friendly tours, a printed family gallery guide and the interactive “Breakfast with Dalí,” help introduce children to art, history and Dalí in a fun and engaging manner. -- www.salvadordalimuseum.org

Things are getting Surreal at the V&A

Surreal Things at the V&A

The V&A will be exploring the influence Surrealism has had on the worlds of fashion, design, film, architecture and advertising in its latest exhibition.

Over 300 items will be go display including Elsa Schiaparelli's Skeleton dress, Meret Oppenheim's Table with Bird's Legs and many famous works by Salvador Dali including his Mae West Lips Sofa, Lobster Telephone and Venus de Milo with Drawers.

Giorgio de Chirico's costumes and set designs for Diaghilev's Le Bal will also be shown along with film clips such as the dream sequence from Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, and a case study of Monkton, the purple-painted Sussex home of the English Surrealist patron Edward James.

A full line-up of performances, workshops and demonstrations will accompany the exhibition. Highlights include a talk by legendary cartoonist Ralph Steadman in which he promises to 'embrace the rules of Surrealism, which don't exist', a Surrealist Ball and chocolate sculpting demonstrations by Choccywoccydoodah.

A kiss from Picasso turned Flamenco legend on to painting

Their paths crossed for a matter of moments half a century ago -- a kiss and a compliment; not long enough to form a friendship with Pablo Picasso, enough to convince flamenco dancer Micaela Flores Amaya she could double as an artist.

"We met briefly in France more than 50 years ago. He had one of my pictures. I gave him some ham and he gave me a kiss," laughed Amaya, better known by her stage name La Chunga, which loosely translates as a tough woman to cross.

On Wednesday Madrid's renowned El Corral de la Moreria flamenco unveiled a series of paintings by the 69-year-old La Chunga, whose artistic style even as a young woman fascinated Picasso.

"How can it be possible that a gypsy girl without studies expresses such sensitivity and colour in her paintings?" an astounded Picasso asked when they met in France in the mid-1950s.

La Chunga, born to Andalusian gypsy immigrant parents in the southern French city of Marseille in 1938, moved to Barcelona as a toddler and became a talented dancer in her childhood.

Yet her meeting with the cubist maestro, who adopted France as his home but was Spanish by birth, encouraged her to add a further string to her bow.

"If I'd known then what I know now I'd have said 'make me a sketch or something,'" said La Chunga wistfully, perhaps mindful of missing out on what would these days have brought a windfall.

But the meeting was brief.

"He just said: 'How can such colours and pictures come from a gypsy woman who has had no training?'" La Chunga told AFP as she waved a hand towards her work, whose style Picasso dubbed "shining naïf."

These days, dancing has had to take a back seat as age has begun to catch up with the dancer whom Ava Gardner discovered on a visit to El Corral in the late 1950s.

Gardner promptly encouraged her to carve out an acting career and that contact, as well as some prodding from flamenco impresario Pastora Imperio, brought her a small share of the limelight across the Atlantic.

But it was dancing which remained her first love.

Madrid's Fine Arts Circle awarded her its gold medal for artistic achievement as La Chunga's flamenco fame spread with tours of the United States, then Mexico before she returned to Spain in late 1958 before further tours from France to Japan via Australia.

"I was dancing from about the age of eight. But I don't dance much any more so nowadays, when I get a bit bored at home, I start to paint!" she told AFP.

The pictures are highly stylised, showing swarthy women with jet black hair clad in bright dresses, often with flamenco shawls, against a backdrop of flowers.

"Basically, they show me, my face, happiness and sadness," explained La Chunga, who won warm praise from her friend of more than 50 years and fellow flamenco doyenne Blanca Del Rey, whose son Juan Manuel is El Corral director.

"Her paintings feel real. She leads me towards artistic truth, which for me is an artistic necessity," Blanca Del Rey enthused.

El Corral, which last year celebrated 50 years as one of Spain's most famous flamenco venues -- celebrity visitors over the half century included John F. Kennedy and Che Guevara as well as Picasso and Dali -- who once tried to visit with a panther in tow -- will show La Chunga's collection until April 20.

Art or sacrilege?

Paintings portraying Jesus Christ as Mickey Mouse and Vladimir Lenin are prompting charges of abuse of religious symbols by Russian Orthodox Church leaders.

The paintings, part of the “Forbidden Art” exhibit at the Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center, went on display March 7.

“The curator has simply broken the law,” church spokesman Vsevolod Chaplin said. “Defacing a religious symbol such as Jesus Christ is not art. It is a civil crime.”

Curator Andrei Yerofeyev countered: “Chaplin just wants to make a name for himself.”

Saying it is not for the church to decide what is art, he added: “Only an artist knows how to portray Jesus.”

Yerofeyev noted that artistic freedom is one of the guiding principles of the exhibit, which features banned paintings, collages and photographs from the last 30 years.

The contentious paintings include a work by Alexander Savko featuring a Christ-like figure in the form of the Walt Disney mouse addressing a crowd of saints and disciples. The painting comes from a 1995 series titled “The Journey of Mickey Mouse.”

The second eyebrow-raising artwork depicts the crucifixion. In place of Christ’s head, however, is the Order of Lenin medal, which shows a profile of the Father of all Fathers.

Lending all the paintings in the exhibit the cache of forbidden fruit, a giant white screen blocks them from the outside world. To view them, viewers must look through peepholes that are a bit too high for comfortable viewing. The museum has helpfully provided a stepladder.

Museum-goers are uncommitted.

“I haven’t decided whether I like the exhibit or not,” said Valentina Nikolayeva, 63, an Orthodox believer, as she descended the stepladder after viewing a collage of Jesus next to a McDonalds logo. Beneath the logo are the words: “This is My Body.” Nikolayeva added, “But maybe that’s the point.”

It is important to document the “social censorship mechanism” at work, Yerofeyev said. “To do that, we are simply showing the dynamic of censorship in Soviet and post-Soviet times,” he said.

Other works in the exhibition feature swear words and fornicating soldiers.

Art imitates video games

SAN FRANCISCO -- Irish playwright Oscar Wilde once said, "Life imitates art far more than art imitates life."

Students participating in a novel design contest might rephrase the famous quotation to something like, "Art imitates video games that imitate life."

Students at Parsons The New School for Design in New York, Academy of Art University in San Francisco and Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles are teaming up with Redwood City-based Electronic Arts Inc. to produce exhibitions that celebrate "The Sims."

The strategic simulation game was the brainchild of EA designer Will Wright. Players create their own homes, businesses and social networks using virtual characters, or Sims, who live in suburban SimCity.

Since the title's debut in 2000, fans have bought more than 85 million copies of "Sims" games, which are starkly dissimilar from the violent "first-person shooters" popular with hard-core gamers. The game is credited with greatly expanding the market to include girls, older adults and other nontraditional gamers.

Artists in the EA contest, sponsored by Ford Motor Co., will work in media including paintings, sculptures and clothing. Another category is "Machinima," films with computer-generated imagery based on the video game.

Judges will award $36,000 in prizes.

"Putting a creative tool like The Sims in the hands of emerging artists opens up a whole new world of possibilities," said Nancy Smith, an EA executive vice president.

The exhibition will take place April 19-May 12 at the Chelsea Art Museum in New York, June 26-July 19 at Gallery 79 in San Francisco, and July 14-Aug. 11 at Ben Maltz Gallery in Los Angeles.

Artists respond to green issues through art

REDLANDS - Artist and environmental conservationist Chelsea Dixon collected her trash and recycling for a month, then created art out of the discarded materials. The sculptures created were presented Tuesday at Dixon's art exhibit "Polyesterine," with fellow artist Meaghan McClandish, on the roof of Lewis Hall on the northeast side of the University of Redlands campus.

Dixon is a senior in the University of Redlands Johnston Center for Integrative Studies, and her art came out of the integration of her art major and environmental studies minor.

"I was really thinking about ways that I can be an activist through my talents, through my art, but not in an obstructive way," Dixon said.

According to Dixon, "Without any distinct end product in mind, the sculptures were born through pure experimentation and are pieces which inherently take on a new identity. It is this power of transformation that can be seen within the sculpture's bizarre compositions that tug at our ability to recognize and define the things we see."

The materials used include plastic bags, glass and plastic water bottles, Styrofoam, newspaper, tissue paper, packing peanuts, bronze wire, cardboard, recycled paper, installation foam and fabric.

"My current bodies of work are creative responses to world evils and tragedies that penetrate my own daily life," Dixon said. "I am responding to phenomena such as capitalism and globalization which perpetuate movements of apathy, homogenization of culture and ravaging consumerism. I then transform these concepts into creative elements and skills necessary to create physical and virtual compositions which can easily display a micro-climate of the macro issue."

McClandish presented installation pieces that she called "wind socks," created out of recycled grocery bags with the intention to create a "visual dialogue" between all of the elements.

The gusty pre-storm winds Tuesday helped the "dialogue" as the wind manipulated the socks.

McClandish said with the amount of energy that it would take to recycle the bags used, it would make just as much sense to throw them away, but is more effective is to make them into something new. Every piece of material McClandish used for the "wind socks" was something that she found in her house.

The exhibition involved various art mediums including sculpture, painting, music and costumed attendees.

Dixon said she has been exploring art exhibition and "the movement space," looking at all of the various art forms coming together to make something else.

"It lets people be art too," she said.

"I think its really important because they're utilizing a space on campus that cost a lot of money and having interactive art is really important," senior Johnston student Jesse Kahnweiler said.

For as long as Dixon can remember she has had a sketch book in hand.

"I have always been fascinated with how things manifest themselves on paper or in your head," she said.

And Dixon's mother and father, both jewelers, have always been supportive of her art.

"They've really encouraged me to pursue this passion," Dixon said.

"Polyesterine" was Dixon's third exhibition on campus while at the university. She and artist friend Kahnweiler plan to hold a senior art show as part of the Multicultural Festival, April 13, on campus. The show will also involve various forms of mixed media. Check the Daily Facts for more details as the event nears.

Art Collector, Museum Builder Nasher Dies

Raymond Nasher, who built a public home for his vast collection of modern and contemporary sculpture, died in Dallas at the age of 85.

Nasher's life as a dedicated collector began after he moved to Texas with his wife, Patsy, and she bought him a Jean Arp bronze, "Torso With Buds," for his birthday, The New York Times said.

He became one of the first developer to include art in commercial and retail buildings when, in 1971, he commissioned sculptor Beverly Pepper for a work for NorthPark Center, a mall complex he built in Dallas.

The Nashers also collected pieces by minimalist and pop artists such as Donald Judd, Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenberg and Roy Lichtenstein, as well as by masters Giacometti, Rodin and Picasso.

Eventually Nasher spent $70 million of his fortune to build a 55,000-square-foot museum and sculpture garden, the Nasher Sculpture Center, in downtown Dallas, adjacent to the Dallas Museum of Art. The center opened in 2003.

Nasher died Friday. His wife died of cancer in 1988.

Palm Springs Art Museum Presents Treasures Of West

On April 11, 2007 the Palm Springs Art Museum’s Treasures of the West: Art from Desert Collections exhibition will open to the public featuring over 100 artworks collected by residents of the Coachella Valley as well as select works from the Art Museum’s permanent collection.

This exhibition will incorporate themes of changing perceptions of the West in American art over the past 100 years. It will include Native American and American art in various media, showing artists working in historic to contemporary styles.

Traditional images of the American West recall themes of an untamed wilderness and the promise of a “new beginning” which became central to the American spirit and our national identity. These historic examples provide inspiration and influence for new trends in contemporary art. In combining traditional Western themes with contemporary perspectives, the exhibition will address how the role of art has shaped a new understanding and perception of the West.

Artworks by George Catlin, William Keith, William Leigh, Frank Tenney Johnson, Maynard Dixon, Allan Houser along with contemporary artists Andy Warhol, Harold Joe Waldrum, Roy de Forest and Arlo and Dan Namingha are but a few of the artists that will be featured from over 25 local collections.

Treasures of the West: Art from Desert Collections is generously supported by presenting sponsor—The Helene & Lou Galen Art Exhibition Fund. The exhibition is organized by the Palm Springs Art Museum and funded in part by the Western Art Council. Season in the Sun magazine is the official media sponsor.

Northern Trust to sponsor art exhibit in Denver

Northern Trust will sponsor a traveling art exhibition called "Inspiring Impressionism" that will tour museums in Atlanta, Denver and Seattle, the company said Thursday.

"Inspiring Impressionism" will explore the inspiration that Old Master painters such as Raphael and Titian had on impressionists including Monet and Degas. The exhibition will feature nearly 100 works of art -- paintings, works on paper, photographs and sketchbooks -- from nearly 70 museums and private collections around the world, including the National Gallery in London and the Musee d'Orsay in Paris. Featured artists include Monet, Cezanne, Degas, Titian, Rubens and Fragonard.

It will open at the High Museum of Art Atlanta on Oct. 16, 2007, then travel to the Denver Art Museum from Feb. 23 through May 25, 2008, and the Seattle Art Museum from June 19 through Sept. 21, 2008.

"Inspiring Impressionism" is organized by the Denver Art Museum in collaboration with the High Museum of Art and the Seattle Art Museum and co-curated by Timothy Standring, deputy director of collections and programs at the Denver Art Museum and Ann Dumas, a London-based independent scholar.

Northern is the national tour sponsor. Additional support will be provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Northern Trust, a multibank holding company based in Chicago, has 84 offices in 18 states, including an office in Denver. It is known for providing wealth advisory services.

Global fine art market grows 53%

PARIS, March 22 - The global fine art market grew 52 percent to $6.4 billion in 2006 with prices close to levels last seen in 1990 and exceeding them in some markets such as the United States, according to a study published on Thursday.

The annual "Art Market Trends" study published by Artprice.com, a French company that collects auction data and compiles an art price index based on it, said the surge in the demand was encouraging some collectors to sell off works they bought in the last boom in 1989-1991.

"Driven by galloping prices and a whole new generation of rich art collectors, the number of over $1 million sales has taken off. Today's prices are - in effect - without precedent," the study said.

In 2006, 810 works sold for over $1 million compared with 487 in 2005. It said while the number of total auctions at 9,200 was down from 9,600 in 2005 the volume of works on offer rose along with prices - with demand strongest at the very high end. "The price index for works bought for under $10,000 grew only 8 percent in 2006...For works above the $10,000 threshold, the 2006 growth rate was 33 percent," it said.

The study said 2006 confirmed New York's leading position in the global market - with prices 32 percent higher than the last peak in 1990. London lost ground to the United States, but gained market share from other European countries.

Used Father’s Corpse For Art

After a shocking display of his father's corpse, a New Zealand artist exhibited the ashes.

After last year’s shocking exhibition of photographs of his father’s dead body lying on a mortuary slab covered in bruises, A New Zealand artist now exhibited his father Neville’s ashes.

Nigel Madden is competing in this year’s Norsewear Art Awards with this work. He says that in the end, his father, an alcoholic, is much more useful dead that he was alive.

The ashes are stored in a Belgium-made urn that Madden bought off the Internet and the plinth is handmade. I took my father’s ashes and placed them in a reflective urn and placed it on a pedestal. In this way my father’s remains function as a symbol and represent art, the author said.

Although his last year’s work “Three Portraits of Neville Madden” was the mourning of the dysfunctional father-son relationship, the artist claims that this year’s work, dubbed “The End of Art”, is less personal.

Madden quotes Picasso: “In art one must kill one’s father”. He liked the cold, reflective surface of the urn that ceases being important as an object and becomes the home of one’s own thoughts. He is also pleased with the ashes as material because it is not often that an artist gets to work with human mortal remains.

The work is up for sale for two thousand dollars, but finding a buyer is difficult.

The three photographs he displayed last year show his dead father on a mortuary slab, his body covered in bruises that he got after suffering a heart attack and falling off a bar stool in a hotel where he had been drinking before a rugby match.

The purpose of the photographs is not morbid in nature. Madden does not deem his conduct as immoral, but just raw and what it is because a dead body for him is just a shell. With the shocking photographs the artist wanted to depict something subtle, relationships. The photographs selected for the exhibition were marked with a warning sign for the audience.

The Norsewear Art Awards exhibition opens in hastings on New Zealand on April 14 and remains open until May 27. The winner of the award gets 20,000 dollars, and second and third contesters get 5,000 dollars each. This national annual award for modern art tries to discover and stimulate excellence in art. This year it is celebrating its 21^st anniversary.

Digital gallery in Dallas broadcasts art for public viewing

DALLAS — Yes, there will be huge high-definition screens whirling out a kinetic stream of animation, information and artistic inspiration. Yes, there will be a constantly changing assemblage of people, and motion, and noise.

But don't compare Dallas' Victory Media Network, which will be officially unveiled Friday night, with the digital displays of Times Square. The thought makes the outdoor art gallery's director cringe ever so slightly.

Unlike New York's iconic JumboTrons that flash news headlines and neon advertisements, the Dallas project is a cutting-edge collection of digital art projects, short films, and experimental animation, said Kristin Gray.

The outdoor gallery, which will be launched in a multimedia format featuring the debut of works by digital artists and performances by experimental audiovisual artists, is the centerpiece of Victory Park, a residential and commercial development adjacent to the American Airlines Center sports arena.

"It's unlike anything else, so people are trying to put it in a box," Gray said. "It's much more choreographed, much more immersive. It's not a shouting match. It's not chaotic. We're not trying to bombard people with information."

Instead, the $30 million project will feature a carefully curated selection of artwork designed to enthrall, entertain and even provoke onlookers. The pieces will be broadcast on 11 giant screens with light and sound systems. Eight of the screens are attached to movable tracks, allowing them to be pushed together or pulled apart to enhance the impact of individual pieces.

About half of the work shown will come from digital artists and filmmakers selected from more than 400 entries in a worldwide call for artists. The rest are pieces underwritten by corporate sponsors, Gray said.

After Friday's opening, the screens will be on 17 hours a day, with programming aired in 15-minute blocks. For the first week, the screens also will show the American Film Institute's top 100 movies of all time.

"It's such an unusual venue to show art," said Rob Vale, a British artist whose work will be on display. "The resolution and the scale are pretty amazing. They just spark creative ideas."

Vale's piece centers on a dancer, who will be springing from one screen to the next.

During a dry run of the system Thursday, the screens blazed to life with color and movement as some of the pieces spread across the 15-by-26-foot digital canvases. In "Polychrome Seasons" by Brooklyn artist Sean Capone, animated branches sprouted to life with fluorescent blossoms then chilled to a winter sleep in snowy white.

The images snared the eyes of Sonja Allen and her husband, Tony, who were walking across the plaza. They stopped to gaze at the wide screens, pointing toward the cascading flowers high above their heads.

"I could watch for hours," said Tony Allen, 47, who works as a draftsman. "I want one of those screens at home."

"It's very fascinating. Beautiful," said Sonja Allen, 44. "The color, how vivid and bright it is. I know it will be appreciated. I'm glad to see Dallas step up like this."

Gray hopes Victory Media Network will become an artistic focal point, not just in Dallas, but in the cultural world.

"We want people to be amazed and captivated by what is out there in the art world," said Gray. "We want it be a place to enjoy and come back to, to create conversations and maybe inspire people to pick up a paintbrush or go on a computer and create art themselves."

Brooklyn Museum Opens Feminist Art Site

Finally, feminist art has a gallery of its own. And then some.

An 8,300-square-foot space specifically dedicated to examining the impact of feminism in the art world, the first museum space of its kind, is taking up residence at the Brooklyn Museum. The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art opens to the public Friday with a full schedule of talks and performances for the opening weekend.

"This is a huge, important global event," feminist icon Gloria Steinem said Thursday at a media preview. "This center is going to change many lives."

The center is the brainchild of Sackler, who originally had thought about creating a freestanding museum for feminist art before approaching the Brooklyn Museum to host the space.

Sackler spoke to The Associated Press a few days before the opening. She said that when she thinks of feminist values, she envisions "equality, equity, justice."

"I see those values in feminism; those are part of what feminist art addresses and speaks to," she said.

"I think it's a wonderful opportunity to work with the public, to engage in subjects in and around the history of women and the impact of women," said Maura Reilly, curator of the center.

Sackler decided the centerpiece of the space would be an iconic work of feminist art, Judy Chicago's "The Dinner Party," from 1979. The large-scale installation has 39 place settings around a triangular table, with each setting representing a woman of historical note from ancient goddesses to Georgia O'Keeffe. Tiles on the floor below the table are inscribed with the names of 999 women of significance.

The work, which has been displayed at the museum twice before, now takes up a permanent space in the center. A 300-square-foot "herstory" gallery is meant to work as an addendum for it, hosting exhibitions that focus on the women mentioned in Chicago's work.

The first exhibit, "Pharaohs, Queens and Goddesses," uses items from the museum's extensive Egyptian collection to look at Hatshepsut, one of the few women to become rulers in Egypt, as well as other females in Egyptian history.

Another 3,000-foot space is meant for changing exhibitions. The first one is "Global Feminisms," a survey of contemporary feminist art featuring women from around the world. The center also has space for public and educational programming.

Feminism as a movement and feminist as a term have been subject to heated debate and strong feeling in public discussions, but Sackler said she wasn't concerned about any backlash over naming the space a showcase for feminist art.

"I'm not really worried about it," she said. "It's a place where people can address all of their issues and concerns around gender equality and inequality."

Others applauded the naming decision.

"I think it's really important that it be called that and I'm really delighted that they chose to do that," said Peggy Phelan, a professor of drama and English at Stanford University who has written on art and feminism. "One of the things that name does is it establishes a certain point of view."

And having a dedicated, permanent space for feminist art is a huge step forward from the occasional survey show or retrospective of a particular artist that museums have done, said Peggy Diggs, a senior lecturer in arts and humanities at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass.

"Shows have been good, but they come and go. They seem to always carry their hat in their hand or else they look so retrograde, this kind of glimpse into the weird, weird past," she said. "I'm hoping this will provide a much richer, deeper view."

Sackler said she hoped the center would be a model that other museums would follow.

"For me, both feminism and feminist art is not the goal — it's the mean toward an end. The end is equality," she said. "Whether it's equal pay or equal wall space, that's the end."