March 13, 2006
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WILLIAM PATERSON UNIVERSITY HOSTS NATIONAL JURIED ART EXHIBIT
“Connections,” the ninth annual national juried art exhibition presented by Studio Montclair, will be on view at William Paterson University’s Ben Shahn Galleries from March 19 through April 21, 2006. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free. A reception for the exhibit will be held on Sunday, March 19 from 3 to 5 p.m.
The show, in Ben Shahn’s Court Gallery, includes works by 75 contemporary artists from across the United States who submitted selections focused around the theme of connections. The exhibit, curated by Donald Kuspit, an award-winning art critic and professor of art history and philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, includes artworks in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, ceramics, and installation art.
“These are times of ‘turbulent pluralism.’ Different standards apply to different kinds of art, and there are radically different kinds of art being produced today. I have tried, by my choices of work for the exhibition, to signal these serious differences,” says Kuspit. “The awards I’ve made assert my own horizon and values even as they also acknowledge the prevailing horizons and dominant values in the existing art situation. My basic thesis is that avant-gardism is over, and that a new humanistic art of emotional depth is desperately needed. It is now time to make art for adults, especially because maturity has become a rare phenomenon in our infantilizing popular culture. The so-called conceptual dematerialization of art must also be countered by a new respect for the material of art: craft and concept have to be reintegrated. Hopefully the works I have chosen for special attention by giving them awards signal these new necessities.”
Kuspit received the 1997 Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Contribution to Visual Arts from the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. He is a contributing editor at Artforum, Sculpture, and New Art Examiner magazines, the editor of Art Criticism, and the editor of a series on American art and art criticism for Cambridge University Press. He has been awarded fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. Kuspit has written numerous articles and catalog essays and more than twenty books.
The exhibit is one of three shows on view concurrently in the Ben Shahn Galleries. On view in the South Gallery is “American Impressions,” a national print exhibition curated by Marilyn Kushner, department chair of prints, drawings and photographs at the Brooklyn Museum. The East Gallery features a one-person exhibit or prints and drawings by Elaine Chong of Summit, winner of the 2005 National Print Competition.
This exhibit is made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Ben Shahn Galleries are wheelchair-accessible. Large-print handouts are available. For additional information, please call the Ben Shahn Galleries at William Paterson University at 973-720-2654.
www.wpunj.edu
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