Wilson County Sugar Sideboard
Gift from Decorative Arts Trust

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art opened their newest exhibition Around Tennessee, 1820-1920 this past Saturday, July 5. The exhibition continues through September 7. Visit the Brooks page on Art Museum Touring.com (Link...) and the Events page (Link...) to see the activities at the Brooks this month. Including rare textiles, fine regional furniture, evocative paintings, and early silver from Memphis makers, Around Tennessee showcases works made in the state and surrounding regions.

Support your local galleries and museums! They are economic engines for your community.

Sherrie

The Memphis Brooks opens on June 4 "Psychedelia: Rock ‘n’ Roll Posters, 1965 - 1970". See the Brooks page on Art Museum Touring.com (Link...).

Victor Moscoso
(American, b. 1936)
The Chambers Brothers and Matrix, March 28-
April 6, 1967
Silkscreen concert poster
Collection of Houston Freeburg

June 4 - August 24, 2008
Curated by Chief Curator Marina Pacini and Preparator
Richard Gamble Rock ‘n’ roll posters for Jimi Hendrix,
Big Brother and the Holding Co., Grateful Dead, and
Otis Redding concerts are among the 40 examples on loan
from Houston Freeburg for this exhibition. Also included are black light posters exhibited in black light!

Support your local galleries and museums!
They are economic engines for their community.

Sherrie

At the end of April, the Commercial Appeal ran an important report about guns in the Memphis public schools - 162 incidents over five years. Even with no fatalities and only a few actual woundings, this is a jaw-dropping number - close to one a week during the school year.

Six of the incidents happened at a school I once attended. One happened where my mother taught remedial reading many years ago, another where my father taught math even more years ago. Three guns were found at the high school that I could see from the dining room of the first house I really remember.

I have to wonder how many guns are not being found. Metal detectors only managed to find eight of the guns. Tips led to most of the confiscations. Many of the violating kids started as victims. How many gang members are too intimidating for anyone to rat on? How many of them carry a gun every day without the school system finding out?

Memphis born and bred Cary Fowler is in charge of the “Doomsday Vault” seed bank in Svalbard, Norway. The Vault, which opened last week, will store seeds from every country on earth, and from every variety of food crop.

He will be in Memphis at the Pink Palace Museum, Monday, March 10, 2008, for a free public lecture entitled, “Seed Banks and Polar Bears: The Quest to Save Agriculture’s Past and Our Future.” This is one of a series of free public lectures in connection with our new exhibit, “Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics.” More details are available on the Pink Palace Museum page on Art Museum Touring.com (Link...).

Fowler grew up in Memphis, graduated from White Station High School and spent his summers on his grandmother’s farm near Madison, Tennessee. That is where his interest in agriculture began. Fowler is the Executive Director Global Crop Diversity Trust based in Rome.

This is a tremendous opportunity to learn more about this fantastic project to protect one of the world's most basic resources, food, and perhaps our species. If you can, you should make an effort to go to this lecture and reception to meet Fowler. The importance of the seed bank makes all the political squabbling pale in comparison. It would be a nice break!

Sherrie

Snap Judgments:
New Positions in Contemporary African Photography
March 1 - May 25, 2008

photo by Boubacar Touré Mandémory
Couleurs de Pêche [Colors of Fishing], from the series "Capitales Africaines," ca. 2000-2005

The first major American exhibition in over a decade to examine current African photography, Snap Judgments presents a panoramic selection of over 200 works by 35 artists from a dozen African Countries. Embracing a variety of media, ranging from small and intimate photogrpahs to expansive multi-media installations, the exhibition features an array of highly individual artistic responses to the enormous economic, social, and cultural changes now taking place throughout Africa. Organized by Okwui Enwezor--one of the world's foremost curators of contemporary art--Snap Judgments offers a fresh and compelling look at Africa.

To see other work from the Brooks exhibitions visit their page on Art Museum Touring.com (Link...).

Sherrie

The Memphis Pink Palace family of museums is looking for a Collections Manager. Ron Brister, Collections Manager for 37 years, has retired. An opportunity like this comes along once in a lifetime.

Picture of Mars from the "Roving Mars" by Walt Disney Pictures at the IMAX Theater at the Pink Palace.

Find out more about the job on the Pink Palace Museum page, at the bottom, on Art Museum Touring.com (Link...).

The Pink Palace Museum current exhibition is "Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics" (Bodine Exhibit Hall) through April 27. You can see a couple of the fabulous Burton Callicott Murals commissioned by the WPA on The Pink Palace Mansion page. Both the musem and the mansion have pages on the Art Museum Touring.com (mansion on the page preceding the Pink Palace Museum).

Sherrie

The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art exhibition introducing Claire Torina closes Feb. 4.

Claire Torina (American, b. 1985)
Untitled, 2007
Oil on canvas
Collection of the artist

Visit Art Museum Touring.com (Link...)to see what else is on display at the Brooks and some other Memphis museums.

Sherrie

UPDATE (from comments):

I thought everyone would like to know that this wonderful show closes March 2, not February 4. The Artist Talk for the show will take place at the museum's First Wednesday event, February 5 at 7:30pm.

Thank you,
Tomi Durgin
Assistant Curator of Education
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art

I'm so white it would be a relief to find some ancestry from outside northern Europe. I'm a walking collection of recessive pigmentation traits. If I sit in the sun unprotected for a few seconds, I can get enough vitamin D for the whole day.

I'm a heterosexual man, fond of pretty women and sports, often at the same time. At age eight, I already knew I wanted to be a scientist (didn't happen, by the way), but a first career as that age's Tom Brady definitely appealed to me even then.

My parents taught me Protestant Christianity. It didn't take in the end, but they gave me what all parents at the time thought they should give.

I grew up in the South, Tennessee to be exact, a Democrat by birth, inheritor to that complicated and often sullied legacy.

In short, by demographics, I was the natural target of Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy to move Southern Democrats into the Republican Party, racism, regionalism, and conservativism intact.

How did the Republicans miss me?

In short, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.