Lively exhibition includes historic and contemporary international works

The Warehouse Gallery presents CMAC: Roots of Collaboration,, featuring works from the CMAC member venues. Vibrant hand-painted vines lace the gallery walls, cleverly tying together the diverse works and accentuating the “family tree” theme of the exhibition, CMAC: The Roots of Collaboration, on view from August 24 through October 19, 2006. This family consists of members in the recently formed Coalition of Museum and Art Centers. CMAC, an initiative by Syracuse University Chancellor Nancy Cantor, has a mission to celebrate and explore the visual and electronic arts through exhibitions, publications, education, and scholarship. CMAC brings together the programs, services, and projects of several different campus art centers and affiliated non-profit organizations in a collaborative effort to expand the public's awareness, understanding, and involvement in the arts.

“This exhibition reveals the unique personality of each Coalition member, elucidating the different objectives and sampling the treasures of each collection. It was conceived to appeal to a wide range of audiences,” notes curator Astria Suparak. “It has something for everyone, whether you're a tree-hugger, pet-lover, art buff, D&D enthusiast, political activist, contortionist, and/or local artist!”

Download PDF press release.

CMAC: The Roots of Collaboration is a visual guide
to the coalition organizations

SUArt Galleries is the newly joined Lowe Art Gallery and University Art Collection at Syracuse University. SUArt Galleries' contribution to the exhibition illustrates the rich diversity of the permanent collection, from the haunting Renaissance images by Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach to the sharp social commentary of Goya. The department’s strength in 20th century American art is seen in Martin Lewis’ sweltering New York nocturne, Glow of the City, and in a pair of chromed Art Deco poodles by Boris Lovet-Lorski.

SUArt Galleries website

Light Work’s Permanent Collection includes work donated by participants in the Artist-in-Residence program. Selected for the exhibition is a photo from Chan Chao’s series of Burmese Rebels, also chosen for the 2002 Whitney Biennial. A sense of calm and tenderness is captured, while also bringing greater awareness of the democracy movement in Burma. Carrie Mae Weems investigates the power of racial jokes and the tradition of oral history in a black-and-white photograph incorporating text. The signature weaving technique of Dinh Q. Lê is on view, combining images from the Vietnam War with stills from popular movies. Recognizing how Hollywood’s representation of the war stretches from the hyper-real to the surreal, Lê suggests it produces a new kind of memory which is ‘neither fact nor fiction.’ Also exploring the border of culture and representation are the collaborative team Max Becher and Andrea Robbins. Their series German Indians looks at a long-standing German romanticization of the American West.

Light Work website

The Special Collections Research Center of Syracuse University Library displays classic images taken for Life magazine by Margaret Bourke-White, alongside her view camera and its travel case; 19th century sideshow performers from the Ronald G. Becker Collection of Charles Eisenmann Photographs; the first comic strip character, the Yellow Kid, created by Richard Outcault; and playful sketches by the Bauhaus architect Marcel Breuer.



SCRC website

Community Folk Art Center contrasts fearsome masks from West Africa with carnivalesque ones from Mexico. The wooden Liberian visors, once part of the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, and now in CFAC’s permanent collection, incorporate natural materials such as feathers and hair. The devil faces flourished with festive paint are from the Mexican folk art collection of Alejandro Garcia, director of SU’s School of Social Work.



CFAC website

The finale of the show is the back room (the former vault of the building), devoted to The Warehouse Gallery’s dreamy projection of the future. An enticing list of upcoming initiatives includes an Art Happy Hour for downtowners, a series highlighting young art collectives across North America, and a store for affordable, handcrafted art objects, among others.
The gallery's mission is to engage the community in a dialogue regarding the role the arts can play in illuminating the critical issues of our times.

Visitors can interact with the displays: a plant-shaped chalkboard asks viewers what they’d like to see in The Warehouse Gallery, clipboards gather information from potential collaborators, labeled Polaroids virtually introduce audiences to one another, and submission applications are dispensed. The gallery will commission Central New York artists to create unique installations for their street-level windows facing the busy intersection of West Fayette and West Streets.

	RECEPTIONS

Coalition members are each matched to an indigenous tree for the exhibition CMAC: The Roots of Collaboration. This organizational strategy is in line with The Warehouse Gallery’s lively, organic growth.

The wall-paintings (tree, vines and leaves) were created and painted by local artist Elaine Margarida Silva Quick. Ms. Quick is a Brazilian-American artist who moved to and settled in Central New York beginning in 2001.