Photographer Rob Hornstra and journalist Arnold van Bruggen are documenting the rapidly-changing region around Sochi, a former Soviet resort on the Black Sea, which is preparing to host the 2014 Winter Olympics. The exhibition at the DePaul Art Museum shows extraordinary photos, together with interviews and films, recording a complicated mix of parallel realities as a massive but temporary international event descends and disappears.

Sochi is the Florida of Russia, but cheaper. It is famous for its subtropical vegetation, hotels and sanatoria. People from all over the Soviet Union associate the coastal city with beach holidays and first loves. The smell of sunscreen, sweat, alcohol and roasting meat pervades the air. Nothing happens here in the winter. But that’s about to change. The Winter Games are coming to town.

The ice skating venues in the old summer capital of Sochi resemble spaceships that have landed on the coast. The most expensive road in the world now links these venues with the ski resorts in the mountains. The Games in Sochi are the most expensive ever organised. But the workers at the bottom of the food chain are rarely paid. Local residents are sceptical.

More than five years have passed since Abkhazia officially gained independence in 2008, but almost nothing in the country has changed. The Olympics have had no impact on tourism and the leadership appears to want to do little about it. A few new houses, roads, schools and amenities have been built, but otherwise Abkhazia seems to stand still – as Sochi 2014 approaches.

In the run-up to the Olympic Games, security forces have been given a free hand in the North Caucasus. An attack in Sochi has to be avoided at all cost. Human rights organisations and lawyers are working overtime. Young men in particular are kidnapped, disappear or are thrown in jail on trumped-up charges. Terrorists commit seemingly random attacks on police and civilians.

All the test events and championships in Sochi have been declared successful. The stadiums are finished. Let the Games begin! But with only months to go before the opening ceremony, reports have surfaced that North Caucasian militants in Syria are being urged to return home and continue fighting in Russia and Sochi. Campaigns have been launched around the world in protest against Putin’s repressive government. Human rights activists are calling for demonstrations at the Olympics themselves to protest new Russian laws on homosexuality. Cracks are beginning to appear in Putin’s prestige project.

“The Sochi Project: An Atlas of War and Tourism in the Caucasus”
January 9, 2014 – March 23, 2014
DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, IL

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

GALLERY FRAMES

Thin Profile: 102
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple wood frame with black opaque finish
Purchasing Options: joined wood frame with splines
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

The Bell Museum will debut Audubon and the Art of Birds, an exhibition that explores the human fascination with birds, and showcases one of the museum’s most valuable treasures: a double-elephant folio edition of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. The rare collection of hand-colored engravings was donated to the Bell Museum in 1928.

John James Audubon (1785-1851) is one of the most enduring figures in American art and culture. His biography reads like a romantic novel. Born the illegitimate son of a French sea captain in what is now Haiti, he was raised in France during the years of revolution. As a young man he came to America to seek his fortune on the western frontier. After years of struggle and business failure, Audubon decided to devote his life on his true passion, the painting of birds. In 1820, at age 35, he set out to paint every bird in America, life-size and in color.

Today, Audubon is synonymous with birds and the conservation of nature. His images revolutionized the way we view birds and the natural world. Before Audubon, artists depicted animals either as allegorical figures, or as stiff, dead specimens. Audubon’s birds are not only technically superb, with every feather and scale delineated, they reveal birds as living, dynamic creatures whose intrinsic beauty and vitality are worthy of study and preservation. Today, artists and naturalists continue to find inspiration in his work and life, and his prints are as popular as ever.

This exhibition focuses on the masterwork of American art, science and conservation – Audubon’s the Birds of America. Organized around a series of themes, the show compares the naive drawings of early naturalists such as Mark Catesby and Alexander Wilson, to the brilliant colors of Francois Levaillant’s engravings and the lavish publications by John Gould. During the 20^th Century artists such as Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Francis Lee Jaques, and Roger Tory Peterson took bird art in new directions. The human fascination with birds continues today, and the show includes works by a select group of living artists, such as Lars Jonsson and Walton Ford, whose work is inspired by Audubon’s example.

The exhibition assembles over 100 prints, drawings and paintings; including a selection of newly conserved original double-elephant folio engravings from the Birds of America, and 60 to 70 works by other artists from the 1500s to the present day. The artworks are complimented with displays of antique illustrated books, specimens and artifacts, interpretive panels, hands-on exhibits and activities on bird biology. The exhibition draws upon the collections of the Bell Museum, University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Woodson Art Museum, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Academy of Natural Sciences, National Museum of Wildlife Art and individual collectors and artists.

Audobon and Art of Birds
October 5, 2013 to January 19, 2014
and February 1 to June 8, 2014*
Bell Museum of Natural History ,
University of Minnesota

October 4, 2014 – Jan. 4, 2015
National Museum of Wildlife Art
Jackson, WY

May 15 – July 26, 2015
Sam Noble Museum 
Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman, OK

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Standard Profile: 106
Type: Standard Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: cherry wood frame with natural cherry finish
Purchasing Options: joined wood frame
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

We are delighted to have a booth at the College Art Association Book and Trade Fair this year in New York City. We have been a member of the CAA for many years and always look forward to talking with the participants of the show. If you or any or your colleagues are going to the show, please stop by our booth and say hello. We would be happy to answer any of the questions you may have regarding frames and framing exhibitions. 

The details: 

We are at booth 214 in  Americas Hall I

The Book and Trade Fair is open to attendees from: Thursday February 14  9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Friday February 15  9:00 AM to 6:00 PM, and Saturday February 16  9:00 AM – 2:00 PM

The following highlights some of the current exhibitions we have done with members of the CAA community. We hope you and your colleagues have or will have a chance to see some of these exhibits.

Grey Art Gallery NYU New York, NY

” Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg” January 15 – April 6, 2013 Profile: 114 Wood: Maple Finish: 13 black opaque

S. Tucker Cooke Gallery The University of North Carolina, Asheville, NC

“Clarence Morgan – Images of Wonder: Recent Work” February 8 – March 4, 2013 Profile: 122 Wood: Maple Finish: 05 Pickled White with black interior

Acorn Gallery Clemson University, Clemson, SC

“Liminal Spaces” student exhibit January 22 – February 1, 2013

Don Russell Clayton Gallery Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA

“Pedro: Menaboni’s Lost Story” January 17 – May 2, 2013

Atheneum Gallery, Sturgis Library Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA

“Southern Industrial Landscapes:Photographs of the Marietta Bell Bomber Plant 1942–44″ January 17 – June 21, 2013     Profile: 114UT Wood: Maple Finish: 15 White opaque

Snite Museum of Art University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN

“Lines Etched with the Weight of Life: Georges Rouault’s Miserere” January 13 – March 10, 2013

South Dakota Museum of Art, South Dakota University, Brookings, SD

“Cockerline Collection: Prints of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s” January 15 – May 12, 2013

Poet, mystic, and spokesman for the Beat generation, Allen Ginsberg also photographed his friends and lovers over the years. He made albums of these photos, with elaborate hand-written captions. Allen Ginsberg’s photographs will be on view at the Grey Art Gallery at NYU from January 15 – April 6, 2013.

Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg

© 2012 The Allen Ginsberg LLC. All rights reserved.

© 2012 The Allen Ginsberg LLC. All rights reserved.

© 2012 The Allen Ginsberg LLC. All rights reserved.

“Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg”
January 15 – April 6, 2013
Grey Art Gallery NYU,
New York, NY

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Thin Profile: 114
Type: thin gallery frame
Wood & Finish: maple wood frame with black opaque finish
Purchasing Options: joined wood frame with splines
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

The South Dakota Art Museum has received an extensive, growing donation of valuable fine art prints that offer visitors an encyclopedic collection of printmaking from the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. The collection includes impressive examples of pop, op, abstract, color field and photo-realist art. The donation comes from Neil C. Cockerline, a former preservation services director and senior conservator with the Midwest Art Conservation Center in Minneapolis, MN in memory of his late mother Florence L. Cockerline. From initial appraisals, the value of the collection in today’s art market ranges between $500,000 and $1 million. 

Neil C. Cockerline holding a print by Robert Indiana called “Jo the Loiterer”

The collection currently contains more than 400 prints and will continue to grow with the South Dakota Art Museum as its permanent home. The Cockerline Collection features more than 100 notable artists including Jim Dine, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Motherwell, Andy Warhol, Henri Matisse and Robert Indiana.  The works are all original prints which means the artist was present or had strict control of the piece during the printmaking process. After each edition is completed, the plate or screen used to make the print is destroyed, making all the pieces in the collection rare.

“I chose to donate this collection to the South Dakota Art Museum because I knew the staff and university are very supportive of the museum, and they have a reputation of professionalism and a commitment to preservation. The collection will also attract people to the museum. There isn’t a collection like this in the state or nearby.” Cockerline selected each piece to be included in the first exhibition. The South Dakota Art Museum plans to schedule many local exhibitions, as well as send the collection to other venues. Cockerline donated the collection in honor of his late mother because of her influence as his artistic mentor as a child. The donation will be used to educate SDSU students in many departments on campus. “When I put the collection together it was basically to form a context of printmaking from 1960 to 1982,” said Cockerline. “I always wanted it to be a teaching collection.”  Museum interns will gain experience handling, cataloging, researching and preserving contemporary works of art. History and political science students will be able to visually see the impact social unrest and current events of the period had on the visual arts. 

Lisa Scholten, SDAM Curator of Collections, said the donation impacts the public by exposing people to rarely seen art. “It would take visiting hundreds of different museums to view all of the prints that now call the South Dakota Art Museum home,” said Scholten.

Lowell Nesbitt Exotic Orchid (1980) Screenprint, 25 X 22 in. © The Estate of Lowell Nesbitt	Ellen (Kuhn) Charap A Black Day in July (1968) Lithograph, 33 X 23 in. © Ellen (Kuhn) Charap
James Rosenquist Miles (1975) Screenprint, 30 X 22 in. © James Rosenquist / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY www.vagarights.com	William Weege Home, Home on the Range…Played… (1970) Screenprint, 41.75 X 29.75 in. © Bill Weege

“Cockerline Collection: Prints of the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s”
South Dakota Museum of Art
January 15 – May 12, 2013
Brookings, SD

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Standard Profile: 101
Type: Standard Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple wood frame with clear lacquer finish
Purchasing Options: joined wood frame with splines
Custom Wood Strainer: 3/4″ wood frame strainer drilled behind
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

In response to the ravages of World War I, French artist Georges Rouault (1871–1958) produced a portfolio of drawings, which were reproduced as heliogravures, a process combining engraving and photography. Dissatisfied with the results of the reproductions, the artist continued to modify the plates using a variety of printmaking techniques in un-conventional ways.  What he achieved was an entirely new object whose surface physicality created a spiritual space in which the viewer’s mind focuses upon the transcendent truths expressed by the artist. Although printed in 1927 under the supervision of the artist, the prints remained in storage until 1948 when they were finally published.

“Lines Etched with the Weight of Life: Georges Rouault’s Miserere” is a haunting series of 58 works on paper.  The title, “Have mercy on me, O God” is taken from Psalm 51, and is considered a monument in twentieth-century printmaking.  This is the first time the Snite Museum of Art will present the series, described as a powerful lamentation of the human condition, in its entirety.

Compared with some of the most famous graphic sequences in history, including Albrecht Dürer’s Little Passion, Jacques Callot’s Caprices, and Francesco Goya’s Disasters of War, Miserere uniquely combines overtly religious iconography with modern, subtle and introspective portrayals of human misery and salvation.  Prints by these artists are also included in the exhibition to illustrate Rouault’s homage to tradition and his endless innovation.

“Lines Etched with the Weight of Life: Georges Rouault’s Miserere”
January 13 – March 10, 2013
The Snite Museum of Art
University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Standard Profile: 106
Type: Standard Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: walnut wood frame with dark walnut finish
Purchasing Options: joined wood frame
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

Ying Li has been a customer for many years. I had the pleasure of doing a studio visit with her in New York City in February of 2011. Ying Li Studio visit. She was and is deeply engaged in her work. Her current exhibit is at Haverford College where she is a professor of art. The following is excerpted from the press release on the exhibit. 

“One does not so much enter into the landscapes of Ying Li as collide with them,” wrote Franklin Einspruch in Art in America last year. Li, a Haverford College professor of fine arts, uses high volumes of oil paint to depict the landscape. She works from a deep engagement with the material and visual possibilities of painting and builds a visceral connection with place. Her latest show, No Middle Way, which runs at Haverford College from Friday, September 7 through Friday, October 12, is curated by Einspruch, an artist in his own right and the founder of artblog.net. What he was initially moved by in Li’s work—the boldness of its color, the thickness of the paint, the evocative abstraction of her landscapes—is showcased and explored in his curatorial effort. 

No Middle Way reflects Li’s working attitude, the way she enters full-force into unfamiliar territory, both literal and artistic, employing observations, memories, art historical knowledge and pure instinct as she constructs pictures that delight and surprise. The breathtaking, diverse landscapes of Alaska, western New York, New Hampshire and even Haverford’s campus tell the stories not only of their locales, but of their creator, a Chinese-born artist with an “exquisite, almost-musical sense of color” (according to The New Yorker).  Those paintings are shown alongside a collection of 13 modern, abstract monotypes that riff on early 18th century paintings by French Baroque artist Jean-Antoine Watteau. Though Li rarely paints people into her landscapes, Watteau does, so those prints allow audiences to see what Li’s hand can do with the familiar shape of a head or flounce of a dress in her colorful, kinetic palette.

Li graduated from Anhui Teachers University in China and received an M.F.A. from Parsons School of Design. Her work has been featured in numerous one-person and group exhibitions both in the United States and abroad and is included in many public and private collections. She has earned the Henry Ward Ranger Fund Purchase Award, the Edwin Palmer Memorial Prize for Painting and Certificate of Merit, the Valparaiso Foundation Fellowship, the Kahn-Mason Foundation Grant, two Vermont Studio Center fellowships and two Heliker-LaHotan Foundation Fellowships. Additionally, she was an artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College last spring. She is represented by Lohin Geduld Gallery, New York.

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

FLOATING FRAME

Standard Floating Profile: 122
Type: floating frame for 3/4″ deep canvas paintings
Wood & Finish: maple wood frame with pickled white finish
Purchasing Options: joined wood frame
Framing Advice: fitting floating frames

We just received this note from one of our customer’s who has officially graduated from Indiana State University with a Masters of Fine Arts. I think you will agree that she is very talented.

“Thank you for making such beautiful frames! I had my MFA thesis show this past April and the frames were fantastic. I’ve attached a few installation images.

Thanks so much.”

Rebecca Prato

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

GALLERY FRAMES

Standard Profile: 115
Type: Standard Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple wood frame with clear lacquer finish
Purchasing Options: joined wood frame
Custom Wood Spacer: 3/4″ wood frame spacer
Custom wood Strainer: 3/4″ wood frame strainer
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

Malick Sidibé’s (Malian, born 1935 or 1936) photographs offer a unique look at a time of political transition and cultural liberation. As Mali gained independence from France in 1960, the youth culture of music, dancing, and fashion exploded in this once-conservative West African nation and Sidibé’s ubiquitous lens chronicled it all. Photographing in nightclubs and at parties in the capital city of Bamako, Sidibé developed a uniquely loose and improvisational style that reflected the liveliness of the events.

Building on his status as a local celebrity, Sidibé opened the eponymous Studio Malick and further distinguished himself by inflecting the sincerity of studio portraiture with the energy and flash of the emergent youth culture. Through the use of props, pose, and attention to personality, Studio Malick not only fulfilled its clients’ aspirational dreams of self-presentation, but also transcended the immediate circumstances of 1960s and ‘70s Mali to present a nuanced study of human character.

Studio Malick
March 29 – June 3, 2012
DePaul Art Museum
Chicago, IL

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

101 maple with clear finish

GALLERY FRAMES

Standard Profile: 101
Type: standard gallery frame
Wood & Finish: maple frame with clear lacquer finish
Purchasing Options: joined wood frame
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

Metropolitan is a long time member of the College Art Association. We will be exhibiting at their annual book and trade fair. We have been exhibiting at the fair for many years because we have many fine art instructors and students for customers. It is a good way to introduce new products as well as learn about what are customer’s needs are.  It is always fun to talk to students about how to frame fine art. We can provide low priced options and framing advice to make sure they learn the professional way of framing and mounting an exhibition. Coming soon to our site will be youtube videos that will give detailed advice on all the different aspects of framing. If your going to the show please stop by and say hello.