From TOLEDO MUSEUM OF ART
A new installation demonstrating artistic innovations across materials is now on display at the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA) in the Wolfe Gallery Mezzanine.
“This installation reflects the Museum’s efforts to rotate the work in the galleries and invite visitors to see the permanent collection in new ways,” explained Halona Norton-Westbrook, TMA’s director of curatorial affairs.
The gallery includes work made from cardboard, fiber, glass, ceramics, wood and metal from the Museum’s permanent collection.
“This iteration showcases artists looking to the human body as inspiration and the varying means of artistic production, techniques, and materials that continue to be used as they seek to interpret the human condition,” said TMA Hirsch Fellow Tami Landis, who also organized the installation.
For example, installation artist, sculptor, and photographer Sandy Skoglund manipulates perspective and scale by staging several large sculptures of babies throughout a landscape to create a surreal photograph in Babies at Paradise Pond. Artists Robert C. Fritz and Marvin Lipofsky pioneered developments in glass in the 1970s by introducing new surface treatments with unconventional forms, occasionally mimicking the curvilinear shapes of the body.
In a striking contrast to the experiments in American blown glass of the period, Hanging Series #24 by Mary Shaffer demonstrates her novel method of slumping (heating the glass until it is just pliable enough to be affected by gravity’s pull) in mid-air, both sculpting it and letting natural forces influence the shapes.
Admission to the Museum and the Wolfe gallery is free for visitors. For more information or to plan a visit, please visit toledomuseum.org.
