This Saturday at 1pm, the Pulitzer will introduce a new series, Dreamtime Storytime, in connection with its current exhibition Dreamscapes. Every fourth Saturday of the month, writers, educators, artists and performers will tell stories related to dreaming.

This Saturday will feature Jane Ellen Ibur, a writer and co-host of Literature for the Halibut, and Emily Kohring, Education Director and Artistic Associate for Metro Theatre Company, telling stories together and asking members of the audience to share what stories pass through their heads as they sleep in their beds.

Jane Ellen Ibur will also be reading some of her original poems. Please enjoy this preview of “Cat Nap”, which will make you think about what expressions you use with children.

http://www.vimeo.com/19980837

Visitors at the Dreamscapes opening reception share their thoughts on the exhibition. Artworks they refer to include Do Ho Suh’s Staircase–Pulitzer Version, Kiki Smith’s Pee Body, Wolfgang Tillmans’s Forest (Briol II), Philip Guston’s Dark Room and Edge and Max Klinger’s A Glove.

Last Friday’s opening reception for Dreamscapes was an all-out success. I know we always say that, but it’s always true in my opinion. Hundreds of art enthusiasts roamed the galleries from five to nine, and the gallery assistants actually had to invite many to leave so they could close for the evening.

While there, I took a few videos of visitors sharing their thoughts so far on the exhibition. We’ve done these “In Your Own Words” clips for the last two openings, and it’s been eye-opening to hear what people see on their first visit.

A particular comment from last week, which highlights the Pulitzer experience, involves one visitor’s walk down the hallway on the lower level to discover at the end of it Wolfgang Tillmans’s Forest (Briol II). This print depicts a man with his back to you, walking down a path in the forest. Like him, you discover a path, the hallway, which seems to lead you into unknown territory. When I dream, there’s always the feeling of “what happens next?” and I love how the placement of this piece leaves you with that feeling. The Pulitzer’s architecture is also known to do that.

So what happens next with this exhibition? As always, the Pulitzer will be offering public programming in conjunction with the exhibition and the themes it encapsulates. We will have a Dreamscapes Concert Series and every Saturday at 1pm offer regular programs, including Frame of Reference, Exploring Art and Dreamtime Storytime, a kid-friendly series in which special guests tell stories related to–you guessed it–dreaming.

We’ll also be asking you to share your dreams. As our senior curator Francesca Consagra said in her video introduction, “This exhibition privileges the idea that art and dreaming does serve a purpose. By engaging with a painting, by trying to recall a dream, you may learn a little bit more about yourself.” We hope that you will join us in exploring concepts around dreaming and the artworks on view and, at the same time, learn about what dreams your mind has to offer.

This Saturday, at 1pm, Emily Rauh Pulitzer will speak in the galleries about Tadao Ando’s architecture and her dream of the Pulitzer building. Courtney Henson, Visitor Services Manager, describes the Exploring Art program:

“As you go through, the spaces will change in size and sometimes in shape and the light will change. As you go through the building, the senses will change, the mood will change, the fiction will change. If they are subtle enough then you will think of it as a fiction or a story, you will just live it as reality.” –Tadao Ando

Ando’s description is one that suits the concepts in Dreamscapes. Senior curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra has chosen works based on the false realities that we are nightly confronted with in our own dreams. Each object chosen for the current exhibition at the Pulitzer offers an opportunity for discussion; sometimes personal but always within the strange real space of Ando’s architecture.

In February and March, two guests will speak about the architecture at the Pulitzer. This Saturday, February 19, Emily Rauh Pulitzer will speak at 1pm regarding the process of building the Pulitzer. This discussion may include some of the hopes and dreams and the sometimes nightmares of building an Ando sanctuary. Saturday, March 19, Bill Wischmeyer, Architect of Record for the Pulitzer building, will speak at 1pm on his experience with the building. Read the rest of this entry »

Art handlers install Do Ho Suh’s site-specific Staircase.

Last week, our senior curator Francesca Herndon-Consagra gave a presentation to the gallery assistants about Dreamscapes. Here is Gallery Assistant Kay’s response to what she learned:

Sometimes it’s hard to see exhibitions leave our beautiful building, but it is always refreshing to see Ando’s architectural space transformed and reinvented over and over again.

After having a sneak preview of Dreamscapes, I’m anxiously awaiting the spectacular show. This will be my first experience with a Pulitzer exhibition that has multiple artists with multiple objects and concepts (with the exception of Old Masters, which had several artists but focused on similar content).  Do Ho Suh, a contemporary artist I have appreciated and admired, will have a piece in the exhibition that will have your eyes seeing nothing but red colors and transparent architecture.

You may not recognize Kiki Smith’s work  as a sculpture right away but more so as a person. She may make you feel nervous and empathetic, closer and more distant, human and humiliated—all in one piece at one time. To experience this work is so familiar to how we experience dreams. It’s not only what you are seeing but how you’re feeling–internal turbulence we can try to explain but cannot always articulate in a logical sense.

Dreamscapes has a compelling blend of installation, sculpture, and painting and joins Modern and Contemporary artists who explore many themes into a unique viewing experience that we funnel under the word “dreams”. For a one-of-a-kind place, this will certainly be a one-of-a-kind show.

Kiki Smith, American (born Germany, 1954) Pee Body, 1992, Wax and glass beads, Figure: 27 x 28 x 28 in., Beads: 23 strands of varying lengths, 1 ft. to over 15 ft. long, Harvard Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Promised gift in part of Barbara Lee and Emily Rauh Pulitzer and Purchase in part from the Joseph A. Baird, Jr., Francis H. Burr Memorial, and Director’s Acquisition Funds, 1997.82

The Pulitzer’s senior curator, Francesca Herndon-Consagra, describes the exhibition Dreamscapes, which opens on Friday, February 11.

The Pulitzer has been closed to the public, since January 22, for the installation of Dreamscapes. The opening reception for Dreamscapes is this Friday, from 5pm to 9pm. Here is the official description of the exhibition taken from the press release:

“The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts is pleased to announce Dreamscapes, on view February 11–August 13, 2011. This exhibition incites questions about the act of dreaming—a succession of thoughts, images, sounds or emotions, which the mind experiences during sleep. The artworks on view and their juxtaposition with Tadao Ando’s architecture offer new ways to think about the content and purpose of dreams on numerous levels: physiological, psychological, cultural and spiritual.

Dreamscapes is organized by Francesca Herndon-Consagra, senior curator at the Pulitzer, and opens with a public reception on Friday, February 11 from 5pm–9pm.

The concept behind the exhibition began with the Pulitzer’s Watercourt. Its meditative reflecting pool and hewed boulder – Scott Burton’s Rock Settee (1988-89) – create an insular dreamscape in the middle of our city. A glass wall divides the Watercourt from the rest of the Pulitzer building. Similarly, René Magritte’s Le monde invisible (The Invisible World) (1954) depicts an incongruous boulder in a room with open glass doors that frame a waterscape beyond. This painting, along with others depicting boulders floating in air, create a unified yet disorienting space out of both the Entrance Gallery and the adjacent Watercourt. Mimicked is a dream that presents ambiguity between indoor and outdoor spaces, refutes gravity’s powers, and shuffles a mundane object like a boulder into different settings. Read the rest of this entry »