Media Contacts:
Gabriel Riera: 305.375.1706
griera@miamidade.gov
Maile Rodriguez: 305.375.1705
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Art Or Life?
Miami Art Museum’s Permanent Collection
Highlights A New Exhibition

Between Art and Life: From Joseph Cornell to Gabriel Orozco
On view November 28, 2003 to April 4, 2004

The Miami Art Museum presents Between Art and Life: From Joseph Cornell to Gabriel Orozco, an exhibition featuring works from its permanent collection, on view November 28, 2003 to April 4, 2004. The exhibition reveals the many different ways that artists have sought, over the past century, to blur the distinction between art and life. Presented in the exhibition are works dating from 1921 to the present that incorporate found objects and images, elements of performance and digital manipulation. The inspiration for the exhibition is the recent gift to the museum from the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation of six works by Joseph Cornell, widely regarded as the American master of collage and assemblage art.

The exhibition is curated by Peter Boswell, assistant director for programs and senior curator at MAM. "The phrase 'between art and life' comes from a celebrated statement by another American master, Robert Rauschenberg, who stated that he sought to work in 'the gap between art and life,' said Mr. Boswell. "These Cornell pieces are an important addition to MAM's collection and they provide a perfect point of departure for exploring the realm between art and life."

Artists featured in the exhibition include Vito Acconci, Wallace Berman, Joseph Cornell, Marcel Duchamp, Nancy Grossman, Damien Hirst, Donald Lipski, Ana Mendieta, Louise Nevelson, Claes Oldenburg, Gabriel Orozco, Alfonso Ossorio, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Betye Saar, Lucas Samaras, Cindy Sherman, and Kurt Schwitters.

The exhibition also showcase a number of young Miami artists, including Westen Charles, Robert Chambers, John Espinosa, Luis Gispert, Mark Handforth, Jean-Claude Rigaud, and Tom Scicluna. A special installation has been created for the exhibition by the artist duo Guerra de la Paz. -- an evocation of a natural Eden made from discarded clothes.

Over the years the relationship between art and life has become a fertile ground for many artists and their approach to the issue has taken many forms. Early in the 20th century such artists as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Kurt Schwitters affixed newspaper fragments, tickets, and other mass-produced printed materials onto their paintings, introducing a piece of everyday reality into the rarified realm of the canvas. This bold move will be represented in the exhibition by a small but exquisite work by Kurt Schwitters in which he included a ticket (Complete sentence)

Marcel Duchamp went a step farther by taking manufactured objects such as a urinal, a typewriter cover, or a snow shovel and called them "art" without altering them in any way; this bold move raised the question -- what constitutes a work of art? -- a question that artists continue to pose to this day. Duchamp will be represented in the exhibition by one of his famous boîtes-en-valise, a traveling case filled with miniature replicas of his works, much like a traveling salesman's sample case.

Joseph Cornell-a close friend of Duchamp's, who helped him assemble his first boîtes-en-valise- followed these early leads by assembling together such disparate materials as cordial glasses, maps of the constellations, newspaper fragments, wooden balls, and colored sand into glass fronted wooden boxes that served as poetic metaphors of the vastness of the imaginative life. Although best known for his assembled boxes, Cornell also worked in collage throughout most of his career. He will be represented in the exhibition through one box and five collages, all dating from the 1950s and '60s, and recently donated to MAM's permanent collection.

Cornell had an enormous impact on subsequent artists, particularly the so-called Neo-Dada artist of the 1950s and Pop artists of the 1960s. These artists will be represented through works by Louise Nevelson, who scoured decrepit New York brownstones for her materials, which she assembled and painted a uniform color-usually black or white-to create poetic assemblages evoking mystery and memory; Robert Rauschenberg, who used silkscreened images from newspapers and magazines suggesting the dizzying flux of modern life; and Claes Oldenburg, who made oversized sculptures of common objects such as an ice bag, a clothespin, and a light switch.

More recently, artists have narrowed the gap between art and life by using the camera to create images that blur the distinction between documentation and fabrication. Cindy Sherman's Film Stills series are fabricated "found images" that look like publicity stills for movies from the 50s or 60s; yet because the figure in them is always the artist herself, they are like fragments of an imaginary visual diary. Gabriel Orozco photographs eccentric arrangements of objects found in the streets. His artwork asks the question: are these chance encounters or are they staged? Is this life or is it art, or is art all around us in life?

The digitization of images makes possible a sort of seamless collage that throws into question where life ends and art begins, as in Anthony Goicolea's photographs featuring multiple images of the same person interacting with each other. In these photographs reality (life) and artifice (art) are indistinguishably intertwined, casting doubt whether reality isn't, in fact, just an artful contrivance, a frame we place around an idea in order to understand it.

The exhibition features a number of new acquisitions to MAM's permanent collection that will be unveiled at MAM for the first time in addition to the Joseph Cornell works. Among the new acquisitions are sculptures by Miami-based artists Robert Chambers and Westen Charles and by New York-based artist Donald Lipski; photographic works by former Miami residents John Espinos and Luis Gispert and a video by Liliana Porter. Miami-based artists, Tom Scicluna and the team of Guerra de la Paz, will be making works especially created for the exhibition. Also included will be several works borrowed from private collections by artists Wallace Berman, Mark Handforth, Damien Hirst, Betye Saar, and Lucas Samaras

About the Curator
Peter Boswell has been assistant director for programs and senior curator at MAM since 1999. He is responsible for the growth of MAM's permanent collection as well as the museum's exhibitions, educational programs and publications. Mr. Boswell holds a BA in Art History from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MA in Art History from Stanford University. Mr. Boswell has worked in museums for twenty years and has an extensive publication history. Additionally, he has lectured widely on 20th-century art and served on numerous juries and panels. At MAM, Mr. Boswell led the curatorial effort behind the exhibition Miami Currents: Linking Community and Collection (2002) and has organized exhibitions for the museum's New Work series of the work of Donald Lipski (2002); Teresita Fernández (2002); and Roberto Behar and Rosario Marquardt (2003). Prior to joining the Miami Art Museum, Mr. Boswell served for 3 years as Heiskell Arts Director at the American Academy in Rome and for 10 years on the curatorial staff of the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. Exhibitions he curated at the Academy include David Ireland ? Italia (1997), Maya Lin (1998) and Joel Shapiro ? Roma (1999)-which included placing five large-scale bronze sculptures in public piazzas in downtown Rome. Exhibitions he curated at the Walker were 2000 BC: The Bruce Conner Story, Part II (1999, co-curated with Bruce Jenkins and Joan Rothfuss); The Photomontages of Hannah Höch (1996, co?curated with Maria Makela); Joel Shapiro: Outdoors (1994, co?curated with Deborah Emont Scott); Krzyzstof Wodizcko: Public Address (1992); Magdalena Abakanowicz (1992); Ann Hamilton/David Ireland (1992, co?curated with Elizabeth Armstrong); Viewpoints: Alan Rath (1991); Viewpoints: Mel Chin (1990); and Landscape Re?Viewed (1989).

The exhibition is supported by MAM's Annual Exhibition Fund.

Benefactors -
Ferrell Schultz, Tina Hills, Joan Reynolds Linclau, Neiman Marcus, Patricia & Emanuel Papper - Donors - The Cowles Charitable Trust, Ella Fontanals Cisneros, Espirito Santo Bank. The Aaron I. Fleischman Foundation, Rose Ellen Meyerhoff Greene, Deborah & Larry Hoffman, Mellon, Northern Trust Bank, Nedra & Mark Oren, Podhurst Orseck, P.A., The Scharlin Family Foundation - Sponsors - Darlene & Jorge M. Pérez, Arthur H. Rice - Patrons - Christie's, Kroll Associates, Nancy & Robert Magoon, Toni & Carl Randolph, Roz & Charles Stuzin, Sally & Earl Weiner, Jerome A. Yavitz Charitable Foundation, Inc., Stephen H. Cypen, President

Tours
Guided tours of the exhibition are available every Sunday at 2pm.

Visitors Gallery
Inspired by the work of Joseph Cornell, Guerra de la Paz and Louise Nevelson, the interactive Visitors Gallery features activities involving collage, assemblage and sculpture.

Gallery Notes
This illustrated take-home brochure provides background information on the exhibition. Available in the galleries free of charge to the public.

Sundays are Free at MAM from 12 to 5pm.
Sponsored by The Miami Herald/El Nuevo Herald.

General Information: 305-375-3000

Media Contact:
Gabriel Riera
305.375-1706
griera@miamidade.gov

Accredited by the American Association of Art Museums, Miami Art Museum is sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts; with the support of the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs, the Cultural Affairs Council, the Mayor and the Board of County Commissioners.