Visual Art
October 8 - December 12
Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports

The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture presents Mixed Signals: Artists Consider Masculinity in Sports, curated by Christopher Bedford, and organized and circulated by iCI (Independent Curators International), New York.

Mixed Signals focuses on artists from the mid-1990s to the present who question the notion of the male athlete as the last bastion of uncomplicated, authentic identity in American culture during the preceding decades. The works presented here, made by artists who have appropriated, riffed on, complicated, and variously re-presented athletic imagery, demonstrate that the male athlete is a far more ambiguous, polyvalent figure in our collective cultural imagination than ever before.

The exhibition includes 40 works in photography and video from artists such as Matthew Barney, Mark Bradford, Marcelino Gonçalves, Lyle Ashton Harris, Brian Jungen, Kurt Kauper, Shaun El C. Leonardo, Kori Newkirk, Catherine Opie, Paul Pfeiffer, Marco Rios, Collier Schorr, Joe Sola, Sam Taylor-Wood, Hank Willis Thomas.

The exhibition, tour, and catalogue are made possible, in part, by The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, the iCI Advocates, the iCI Partners, Agnes Gund, Gerrit and Sydie Lansing, and Barbara and John Robinson.

Mixed Signals is an expanded version of Contemporary Projects 11: Hard Targets--Masculinity and Sports, an exhibition curated by Bedford and organized by the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Admission to the exhibition is free. The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm and is located in the Fine Arts Building. For more information call 410-455-3188.

Photo: Brian Jungen, Michael, 2003, screen print on powder coated aluminum, 10 boxes, installation dimensions: 34 x 44 x 33 in. Rennie Collection, Vancouver.

Visual Art
Continuing through December 13th
The Art of Persuasion: Poster Design from 1896 through 2008

The Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents The Art of Persuasion: Poster Design from 1896 through 2008, on display from August 25th through December 13th, 2009.

The Art of Persuasion surveys a century of development in the visual language of posters. Presented in three distinct thematic groups—Pleasure & Leisure, Politics & Propaganda, and Commercial Advertising, this broad selection of posters highlights transformations in the art, culture, and technology of posters. Disseminating vital information through use of diverse visual strategies, poster artists engage the viewer to sell ideas and products.

Many of the posters in the exhibition are widely recognized and have been collected for their historic and cultural significance as well as their aesthetic qualities. Also included are posters identified as emerging landmarks in this ever evolving medium. Selections were drawn from UMBC’s Special Collections as well as public and private collections.

The presentation of this exhibition is supported in part by a General Operating Grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the State of Maryland and the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Friends of the Library & Gallery, the Libby Kuhn Endowment, and private contributors.

The Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 12 noon to 4 pm, on Thursday until 8 pm, and Saturday and Sunday 1 - 5 pm. Admission is free. For more information call 410-455-2270.

Image: Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the U.K., Silkscreen Print, 1976, United Kindom, on loan from Dennis Lo

Visual Arts
Thursday, November 5th
Trisha Ziff

The Visiting Artist Lecture Series and the InterArts Series present Trisha Ziff, a British born curator, photographer and filmmaker who currently lives in Mexico City and whose work explores cultural hybridism. She will screen and discuss her documentary film Chevolution (90 min.), based on her international exhibition and book Che: Revolution and Commerce, published in Spanish, Italian and English. Chevolution looks at the famous image of Che Guevara and tells the story of what may be the most reproduced image in the history of photography.

Trisha Ziff's major international curatorial projects include Mary Kelly's Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi, Hidden Truths Bloody Sunday and Distant Relations, a dialogue between Irish, Mexican and Chicano artists (1996). Her recent film productions include Oaxacalifornia (US/UK, 1996), My Mexican Shiva (Mexico, 2007) and Nine Months 9 Days (Mexico, 2010). She is also the director of the film La Maleta Mexicana and in 2006 founded 212BERLIN, a space dedicated to the image in Mexico City. She is currently working on a film Between Dog and Wolf (Mexico), while developing major exhibition for the 70th anniversary of the end of the Spanish Civil War (Mexico/Spain). Trisha Ziff has received many accolades, including a Bancomer Foundation award and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

4:30 pm, Lecture Hall II

Image: Guerrillero Heroico, courtesy of the Alberto Korda & the Korda Estate

Visual Arts
Thursday, November 12th
Michael Bierut

The Visiting Artist Lecture Series and the InterArts Series present a lecture-presentation by graphic designer Michael Bierut.

Michael Bierut was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1957, and studied graphic design at the University of Cincinnati's College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning, graduating summa cum laude in 1980. Prior to joining Pentagram in 1990 as a partner in the firm's New York office, he worked for ten years at Vignelli Associates, ultimately as vice president of graphic design.

His clients at Pentagram have included The New York Times, Saks Fifth Avenue, The Council of Fashion Designers of America, Harley-Davidson, The Museum of Arts and Design, United Airlines, The William Jefferson Clinton Foundation, Mohawk Paper Mills, Princeton University, the New York Jets, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the Morgan Library and Museum.

He has won hundreds of design awards and his work is represented in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the Musee des Arts Decoratifs, Montreal. He served as president of the New York Chapter of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) from 1988 to 1990 and is president emeritus of AIGA National. He also serves as on the boards of the Architectural League of New York and New Yorkers for Parks. Bierut was elected to the Alliance Graphique Internationale in 1989, to the Art Directors Club Hall of Fame in 2003, and was awarded the profession's highest honor, the AIGA Medal, in 2006. In 2008, he was named winner in the Design Mind category of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Awards.

Bierut is a Senior Critic in Graphic Design at the Yale School of Art, and a Senior Faculty Fellow at the Yale School of Management. He writes frequently about design and is the co-editor of the five-volume series Looking Closer: Critical Writings on Graphic published by Allworth Press. His commentaries about graphic design in everyday life have been heard nationally on the Public Radio International program "Studio 360" and his appearance in Helvetica: A Documentary Film is considered by many that movie's funniest moment. Bierut is a co-founder of the weblog DesignObserver.com, and his book 79 Short Essays on Design was published in 2007 by Princeton Architectural Press.

7:00 pm, Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery. Admission is free.