Raw/Cooked: Marela Zacarias, February 1, 2013 through April 28, 2013 (Image: DIG_E_2013_Raw_Cooked_Marela_Zacarias_001_PS4.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2013)

Zacarias conceived these objects from the outset to be quasi-organic and anthropomorphic; she shapes and grows her works, golem-like, in her studio, sketching them first with ordinary window screen, plywood, a power drill and screws.  Zacarias has perfected her technique (painting and sanding multiple layers of joint compound before covering all with original painted designs) through rigorous studio practice. She’s also a serious colorist—for Raw/Cooked she spent hours studying the color palettes of the original murals at the Museum—and a bit of an activist who often works with local communities to incorporate the history of spaces, things and people. In Supple Beat each title refers to actual street names and addresses of the Williamsburg Houses. Certain titles have other associations too, like 202-254 Graham,  which stretches toward the mezzanine balcony and reminds Zacarias of the great American choreographer and dancer Martha Graham.

While Zacarias has created both figurative and abstract murals in the past, her interests and studio practice in recent years have shifted towards abstraction and pattern and intersecting histories. Whether she’s inviting participation from local residents on public art projects or advocating for immigrants’ rights, she has track record of combining her aesthetic interests with social and political activism; in Hartford, Connecticut she was the cofounder of Latino/as Contra La Guerra (Latino/as Against the War) and also worked closely with the Regional Coalition for Immigrant Rights in Connecticut. In the case of the Williamsburg Murals Zacarias appreciates that the city of New York and the WPA made a bold move in supporting abstract art, commissioning works by Ilya Bolotowsky, Paul Kelpe, Albert Swindon and Balcombe Greene (little known abstractionists at the time, now revered as an important American artists working in the Constructivist tradition—think forerunners of Color Field and Hard-edge painting.) Against the odds these murals had a life in the Williamsburg Houses, were lost beneath coats of paint in the post-war period, and finally rediscovered and restored in the late-1980s. Supple Beat takes inspiration from the strength and vision of 1930s New Yorkers—artists, urban planners, and regular people who lived through the Great Depression. It also sends out a hopeful note for urban renewal and the future of livable neighborhoods in New York City.

Placed in close proximity with Jackson’s Blackboard Paintings—abstracted aerial views of American prisons—Hoffman’s larger than life-sized bust portrait stands in for the historical black male body, and by extension, the slave trade. Jackson has created a compelling space in which to contemplate race and culture, and Senegalese Soldier has an important backstory. The Museum purchased it and Hoffman’s Martinque Woman (28.384, which was prominently featured in our recent exhibition Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties) in 1928, almost immediately after they were finished. Both are absolutely exceptional works in Hoffman’s career for two reasons that I will explain after this background on the artist.

Malvina Hoffman (American, 1885-1966). Martinique Woman, 1928. Black metamorphic stone, 22 x 14 1/4 x 15 1/4 in. (55.9 x 36.2 x 38.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 28.384. © Estate of Malvina Hoffman

If you’ve heard of Malvina Hoffman, you may have seen the famous photograph of her astride the shoulders of one of her monumental figures with a chisel in hand wearing her signature velvet tam on her head. Hoffman was undaunted in her pursuit of a career as a sculptor at a time when it was still an unusual one for women. She tapped her family’s close ties among New York’s cultural elite in order to achieve her goal, seeking lessons and critiques from several prominent New York sculptors. But Hoffman set her sights high and in 1910 took off for Paris with hopes of studying with the great Auguste Rodin—and she did, eventually, receiving critiques and earning status as an assistant. Although Hoffman never adopted his dynamic style, (Rodin’s bronzes suggest movement), she was inspired to pursue similar subjects, including lovers and dancers.

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 forced Hoffman back to New York and changed her outlook on life and art. In 1919 she served as director of the National and Foreign Information Service of the Red Cross in New York and also made a life-altering trip through the Balkans with the American Relief Administration. Unable to happily continue her routine of work, in 1926 she embarked on a trip to North Africa to retune her eye through experiences which were entirely new to her.

Malvina Hoffman (American, 1885-1966). Senegalese Soldier, 1928. Black stone, 20 x 10 x 15 in. (50.8 x 25.4 x 38.1 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Dick S. Ramsay Fund, 28.385. © Estate of Malvina Hoffman

Which leads us to the Senegalese Soldier.  Early on, in Tunisia, Hoffman traveled south from Tunis by train to Gabé where, on arrival, she encountered Senegalese troops under the command of a French colonial officer. Her later account is tinged with the language of exotification so common in Eurocentric descriptions of African places and people. Finding the features of the soldier “startlingly impressive,” Hoffman exercised her privilege as a westerner in the French colony to gain access to the soldiers whose physiognomy interested her—an arrangement only marginally redeemed by her interviews to determine their willingness to sit for her. Interestingly, however, in the clay model for Senegalese Soldier, Hoffman agreed to the man’s conditions that she never show the work in Africa nor ever associate his name with it.

Hoffman thus began her focused attention on the portrayal of racial types—and that is the first reason the two Brooklyn works are exceptional. The second is that in producing the marbles in fine, black stone, she broke with her previous naturalistic style and adopted a monumentality and idealism in keeping with a broader aesthetic trend in the 1920s—one that celebrated and perfected physical presence. And herein lies the second reason for their exceptional status: these works constituted an effort by Hoffman to modernize her aesthetic.

Malvina Hoffman, Les races humaines, Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadero de Paris (November 1933). Malvina Hoffman papers, Research Library, The Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (850042). © Estate of Malvina Hoffman

Just how unusual these works are in her production has been obscured by their association with the much larger commission she undertook in 1930 for Chicago’s Field Museum. It involved the production of nearly 100 bronze sculptures of the “races of man” for a physical anthropology display similar to a type popular at the time. As Marianne Kinkel discusses in great detail in her publication Races of Mankind: The Sculptures of Malvina Hoffman (University of Illinois Press, 2011), these installations were underpinned by theories about fixed racial identity—based in everything from geography to hormonal patterns. Hoffman won the commission through her social connections and, for her part, ignored much of the current science in producing the works. As Kinkel explains, she rejected ideas about establishing racial types through “composites” of many individuals. She based most of her sculptures on anthropological photographs (she personally traveled only to Asia for the global project) and stated that racial identity was better defined by gesture and action.

Her works for the commission are as photographic as bronzes can be. The differences between these literal works and Brooklyn’s two impressive heads did not stop her from exhibiting them together in several exhibitions, including one in Paris’s Trocadero Museum of Ethnology in 1933.

A collaborative project between the artist and her audience, Wish Tree is Ono’s open invitation to viewers to write their own wishes on small tags that the writer then hangs on the live tree – making a kind of living monument to all our dreams, big and small.  Ono has recounted that as a child in Japan she would write wishes on small pieces of paper which she then attached to the branches of flowering trees in the courtyard of a temple.

Yoko Ono's Wish Tree installed on our third floor.

Over the course of our exhibition, as the tree fills with wishes, the museum will occasionally collect the tags and at the end of the show, all the cards are returned to Ono, to be buried, unread, around her Imagine Peace Tower, a 2007 installation in Reykjavík, Iceland, dedicated to the memory of her late husband John Lennon.  More than a million people have shared their wishes with Yoko Ono, and we invite you to add your dreams.  As the artist has said, “All my works are a form of wishing.  Keep wishing while you participate.”

GO Featured Artist, Yeon Ji Yoo, installs her work in the exhibition.

You may have noticed that we’re opening GO on a Target First Saturday. Given the democratic nature of the project, we thought this would be a fitting way to get the show off to the right start.  For this month’s programming, our education team worked with GO’s Neighborhood Coordinators to pull together an evening full of events showcasing all the great things going on in Brooklyn—from Coney Island to Bushwick!  It’s going to be an exciting night with performances from Underground System Afrobeat, Maya Azucena, AVAN LAVA, L.O.U.D. (League of Unreal Dancing), and Parachute: The Coney Island Performance Festival.  Our GO Featured Artists—Adrian Coleman, Oliver Jeffers, Naomi Safran-Hon, Gabrielle Watson, and Yeon Ji Yoo—will be giving pop-up talks next to their works starting at 8pm (get in line early for free tickets, which will be distributed from the visitor center at 7pm). There’s more, too, so check out the full schedule.  Best of all, Target First Saturday is free!

During the evening, we’ll be hosting a special event for Members who’ve taken part in GO. You’ll find us saying hello to our awesome voters and making sure they get their GO swag.  Also, our friends from NYCHA will be joining us as our educators lead tours through the installation for housing residents.

Sharon and I have been fortunate enough to meet many of you throughout this process and to read and learn from your valuable feedback; we are very proud of what we’ve accomplished together and we hope that we’ll see you again on Saturday night to celebrate GO Brooklyn.

In the studio with Naomi Safran-Hon.

The nominations from the community offered a remarkably broad range of artists and practices. We were struck by the different art worlds represented by the nominated artists. Although painting prevailed, we saw work representing a range of media styles, and subjects. We also appreciated that the artists ranged from the self-taught to the academically trained, and that some are full-time artists while others create their art alongside other careers.

Our challenge was to take this array of options and to think about the show as an entity, including its cohesiveness and scale. We wanted to select a group of artists who would represent the range of those nominated, and the artistic spectrum of those working in Brooklyn. Ultimately we strove to present a strong cohesive exhibition that reflected the artistic choices that reflected the democratic process of GO.

As we deliberated and strategized, we recognized that difficult choices needed to be made. We decided to chose a group of artists that represented the breadth of practices we had seen in the studios and a selection of several works by each artist to convey a sense of depth. Given the size of the mezzanine gallery we had at our disposal, this meant that the group of 10 nominees had to be pared down to fewer finalists.

Curators taking a look at the work of Naomi Safran-Hon during the installation of GO in the Brooklyn Museum mezzanine gallery.

As with all exhibitions initially everything seems possible until the moment for difficult decisions arrives. We hope that everyone who has engaged in this project will come to see the final exhibition. As we install the show this week, we will begin to see the relationship between the individual works by each artist as well as the conversation between the different artistic voices in the gallery. The distinctive space of the mezzanine gallery presents unique opportunities for the installation and exhibition design, including the placement of informational texts and the inclusion of a community component to reflect the open studio weekend and the tremendous activity that led us to this installation.

Over the past year and a half, we discussed many ways to approach the exhibition, including whether or not the exhibition was necessary. In the process, we considered various models. For instance, we have already mentioned the inspiration provided by ArtPrize and our interest in modifying their framework to see work within the context of the studio and to require voters to nominate fewer artists. We also looked at the Walker Art Center’s 50/50: Audience and Experts Curate the Paper Collection, an exhibition that invited the public to vote on a selection of images on a kiosk at the museum and online, while their chief curator chose works by artists represented in depth in the museum collection. The resulting selections were hung in two sections, sparking “a range of questions about the dynamics between ‘audience’ and ‘expert,’ or between curatorial practice and so-called ‘mass taste.’” By contrast, the Hammer’s new Mohn Prize awardee was chosen by public vote from the museum’s Made in L.A. biennial exhibition. The experts, a jury of curators, winnowed the pool from the 60 exhibiting artists to 5 before inviting the public to vote. This model shifts the weight of decision making toward the experts. We also considered our own past projects, particularly Click! A Crowd-Curated Exhibition. While Click!, a great success, has served as a model for many subsequent projects elsewhere, it focused on using the internet as a tool and the photographs, though Brooklyn-themed, were judged online and in isolation.  During GO, we wanted to shift the focus more toward seeing a body of work in the studio with the artist present while creating an awareness of the art-making taking place in various communities throughout Brooklyn.

Installation of GO started on Monday in our Mezzanine gallery on the second floor of the Museum.

Since the main objective of GO was to connect the community with the vast number of artists working in their neighborhoods, the process included meeting and talking to artists face-to-face as well as scores of opportunities to encounter art in the flesh, so to speak. We invited the public into artists’ studios and asked it to nominate artists, creating the shortlist of artists for me and Eugenie Tsai to visit and select for the show, creating a collaboration between members of the community and the museum curators.

As always, practical issues arise. With exhibitions, the issue is always one of available space during the preferred period of time. We wanted the exhibition to follow the open studio weekend as quickly as possible and estimated that the entire process would take about three months, putting the opening in early December. We also felt strongly that unveiling the show on a First Saturday would be in keeping with the community-spirited character of the show. We felt now was the right time with Brooklyn experiencing such a great renaissance and with such widespread enthusiasm for the incredible creativity in the borough.

More to come this week!

The video, which you can watch above, shows Ai dancing with colleagues at his Beijing studio. He called the video “Grass-Mud Horse Style,” which refers to a fictional creature used to symbolize anti-censorship in China and has been an ongoing theme in his work. Since 2009, Ai has become known for his political activism and use of the internet and social media as a platform to address social and political issues. This activity resulted in his detention in 2011 for 81 days by Chinese authorities. Most recently, he was unable to attend the opening of his retrospective at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden because his passport is being held by authorities. Ai produced this video as a reminder that freedom of speech and creative expression should be allowed to all.

Like PSY’s version, Ai’s video quickly went viral, but was removed from Chinese websites. In response, artist Anish Kapoor invited hundreds of friends to his London studio to create their own video as a sign of support. He also asked individuals and institutions around the globe to participate. The resulting video was released late last week with clips from many museums including ours. Anish Kapoor explained in the press release: “Our film aims to make a serious point about freedom of speech and freedom of expression. It is our hope that this gesture of support for Ai Weiwei and all prisoners of conscience will be wide-ranging and will help to emphasize how important these freedoms are to us all.”

The short clip in Kapoor’s video featuring the Brooklyn Museum is part of a full version we produced, which includes a cameo from our Director, Arnold Lehman, and our staff.

Ai Weiwei’s retrospective, Ai Weiwei: According to What?, is on view at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden until February 24, 2013, before it travels to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Miami Art Museum. We’ll be the final venue of the North American tour; the exhibition will open here in April 2014.

• Adrian Coleman, Fort Greene, painting
• Oliver Jeffers, Boerum Hill, painting, illustration, and drawing
• Naomi Safran-Hon, Prospect Heights, painting
• Gabrielle Watson, Crown Heights, painting
• Yeon Ji Yoo, Red Hook, mixed media sculpture

We will be discussing our choices, challenges with the show, and the installation process more in the next couple of weeks. For now, we have been focused on compiling the checklist and working with our designer, registrar, and editorial staff to plan the exhibition, gather the works, and prepare the written materials to accompany the show.

We hope you’ll continue to join us as we move towards the exhibition, which opens December 1 as a celebration of not only these artists, but all the artists and participants that made GO such a great success.

Roman. Double Cosmetic Tube, 4th-5th century C.E. Glass, 5 1/8 x 1 1/16 x 1 7/8 in. (13 x 2.7 x 4.7 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Robert B. Woodward, 01.123.

Looking through our ancient holdings, my attention was immediately caught by the blown glass vessels used to hold perfumes, ointments, or eye makeup (kohl). These so-called cosmetic tubes have been found mainly in tombs, giving rise to the highly romantic and almost certainly false belief that they were used to collect the tears of mourners. They are thus sometimes referred to as lachrymatories—an erroneous historical designation that nonetheless creates an imaginative link between them and Othoniel’s work called Lagrimas (Tears), a collection of jars filled with small glass shapes floating in water.

Jean-Michel Othoniel (French, b. 1964). Tears (Lagrimas), 2001. Glass, distilled water, wood, aluminum, 55 1/8 x 196 7/8 x 27 9/16 in. (140 x 500 x 70 cm). Private collection. © Jean-Michel Othoniel/ADAGP, Paris 2012. Courtesy Galerie Perrotin, Paris and Hong Kong. Photo by Guillaume Ziccarelli

Jean-Michel Othoniel's untitled blown-glass sculptures hang from the gallery ceiling.

Jean-Michel Othoniel's limited-edition bottle for Dior’s perfume, J’Adore.

His series of untitled blown-glass sculptures that hang from the gallery ceiling like overripe, seductive fruit also bear a distinct resemblance to these elongated and biomorphically-shaped  cosmetic tubes. I wonder too if Othoniel had these ancient vessels in mind when he designed the new limited-edition bottle for Dior’s perfume, J’Adore.  With its pendulous shape and spiraling trail of glass, this contemporary perfume bottle would not appear out of place among the toilette items of a wealthy 4^th century C.E. Roman woman!

Roman. Double Cosmetic Tube with Ribbon Handles, 4th-6th century C.E. Glass, 3 1/8 x 1 1/8 x 5 1/16 in. (8 x 2.9 x 12.9 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Robert B. Woodward, 01.370.

The glass ribbons looped along the sides or encircling many of these cosmetic tubes might have been functional as well as decorative. Oils were an important component of ancient perfumes and makeup and this raised ornamentation would facilitate a grasp on what could become a slick surface.

Roemer, 1680-1700. Colorless glass, height: 9 9/16 in. (24.3 cm);. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Wunsch Foundation, Inc., 2001.94.1.

A similar strategy is in play on this seventeenth-century roemer, a drinking glass common in Germany and the Netherlands (and frequently depicted in Dutch still-life paintings). Its base is punctuated by a series of textured glass beads called prunts that make a pleasing contrast to the smooth bowl. In an era when forks were not used regularly and cup handles weren’t common, prunts would help greasy hands maintain a grip on slippery glass. They remind me of permanent finger prints marking the spots where glass came in contact with flesh.

Nearly all of Othoniel’s works are informed by the aura or trace of a body: the oversized necklace as bodily surrogate, the implied occupant of an empty bed, glass shaped (or “wounded”) by a glassblower’s breath and touch. In this way, his poetic works resonate with centuries-old vessels and their intimate sensory connections to the long-vanished bodies that once held and used them.

In alphabetical order:

• Aleksander Betko, Cobble Hill, painting and drawing
• Jonathan Blum, Park Slope, painting and printmaking
• Adrian Coleman, Fort Greene, painting
• Oliver Jeffers, Boerum Hill, painting, illustration, and drawing
• Kerry Law, Greenpoint, painting
• Prune Nourry, Boerum Hill, photography, video/film/sound, and sculpture
• Eric Pesso, Ditmas Park, sculpture
• Naomi Safran-Hon, Prospect Heights, painting
• Gabrielle Watson, Crown Heights, painting
• Yeon Ji Yoo, Red Hook, mixed media sculpture

We are pleased to have such a mix of artists represented in this group, including painters, illustrators, sculptors, and installation artists. Painting clearly ruled with seven of the ten artists being self-identified painters. At the same time, we note the absence of design, fashion, and textile arts, and also that photography, video, and performance are represented only in Nourry’s work.

The results were also a bit surprising in terms of the weekend activity, as was hinted at in Shelley’s post on unexpected traffic patterns. Nine neighborhoods are represented, but they are not the neighborhoods that most people were predicting to be the hot spots. Shelley will be delving into these results to show how visitation may have shaped nominations, so stay tuned as we report on this more.

As we have discussed along the way, this project aimed not only to bring artists and their communities closer together, but also to open up the curatorial process. While most of our exhibitions at the Brooklyn Museum have the standard model of being curator conceived and organized, we recognize the value in considering other models. Most recently, our Raw/Cooked series features under-the-radar Brooklyn artists nominated by an artist advisory committee and then selected by Eugenie Tsai, our Curator of Contemporary Art.

With GO, we established a collaborative process where we invited the public to visit studios and then nominate artists before Museum curators would visit the top artists and make the determination of those to be featured in the exhibition, and the work to be included. This will undoubtedly be a difficult task, particularly given the great range of work and the strong support for these artists. Nonetheless, we are committed to creating the best exhibition possible within these parameters, and that will mean making some tough choices.

Over the next month, we will visit these ten artists’ studios and begin highlighting them one by one on our website. By November 15th we will announce the featured artists for the exhibition, which will open on December 1, 2012 during our Target First Saturday evening.