Schedule of exhibits

ONGOING EXHIBITS OPENING NOV. 8

Selections from the permanent collection

Highlights include paintings by Winslow Homer, John Singer Sargent, Childe Hassam, Norman Rockwell and other important 19th and 20th century American artists; modern and contemporary works by, among others, Romare Bearden, Robert Motherwell, Petah Coyne and Sally Mann; and folk art and contemporary photography.

Earthly Delights: Judith Leiber handbags

An installation of about 30 handbags and pillboxes designed by Judith Leiber will highlight selections from the more than 100 Leiber pieces owned by the museum.

THROUGH MARCH 1

The Digital Arts Research Collaborative: Revo/Over

"Revo/Over" is an interactive digital art installation that uses visual and aural information to create an interaction between viewers and the work. As a self-sustaining system, this live, real-time virtual environment features entities that constantly move across free-form 2- and 3-D projection screens. These entities react to view stimulation and emanate sounds, both of their own volition and in response to the viewer's location within the space. The installation is specifically designed for the MediaLab, taking visual cues from the unique structural elements of the Taubman Museum of Art and re-interpreting those forms into virtual space.



Rethinking Landscape: Contemporary Photography from the Allen G. Thomas Jr. Collection

"Rethinking Landscape" will feature more than 20 large-scale images from an array of artists that focus on expanding the definition of the contemporary landscape. Works by well-known and emerging national and international artists will be on view, including Taj Forer, Andreas Gefeller, Anthony Goicolea, Bill Henson , Sarah Anne Johnson, Chris Jordan, Jeff Chien-Hsing Liao, Sze Tsung Leong, Sally Mann, Andrew Moore, Zwelethu Mthethwa, Martina Mullaney, Robert and Shana ParkeHarrison, Sarah Pickering, Kerry Skarbakka and Burk Uzzle.

THROUGH MARCH 8

Pens and Needles: Drawings for Tattoos

A report by National Public Radio notes that more than 36 percent of people ages 18 to 34 have at least one tattoo. Many individuals who sport these colorful designs travel extensively to amass their own on-their-body art collection. Pulling from various collections and archives around the region, "Pens and Needles" will feature both a historical and contemporary look at the drawings created by a unique group of body artists.

THROUGH MAY 28

Constructed and Delivered: The Taubman Museum
of Art

"Constructed and Delivered" will allow viewers to gain insight into how the Taubman was constructed and to investigate the various planning and thinking strategies that were involved in its inception. In addition to viewing conceptual drawings and built models, audiences can watch two time-lapse films of the building's construction.

THROUGH AUG. 31

Mark Jenkins: Recordings

Internationally renowned street-based artist and Virginia Tech graduate Mark Jenkins will create a series of tape and cloth-based sculptures for non gallery areas throughout the museum. His eye-catching works reflect his intent to interact with viewers in wonderful and surprising ways. During the exhibition, Jenkins will conduct a workshop to teach area artists and other individuals his unique working methods.

THROUGH OCT. 25

17th Century Florentine Painting: Selections from the Haukohl Family Collection

The exhibition will premiere, for the first time in its entirety, the largest collection of 17th-century Florentine art in America held by a private family. Paintings by artists Cesare Dandini, Alessandro Gherardini, Giovanni Domenico Ferretti and others will delight viewers with their stunning renderings of classical themes.

MARCH 20 THROUGH MAY 31

Devorah Sperber: A Strange Sense of Deja Vu

Shower curtains that reveal a '68 Volkswagen bus. A Persian rug made from 18,000 marker caps. A 40-foot-long bed of stacked river rocks made from 20,000 spools of thread. Devorah Sperber 's composite works evoke memories and explore the way that we process information. Using technology as a starting point, Sperber incorporates the use of everyday objects in ways to create visually stunning objects that merge visual art and culture with scientific inquiry. Up close, they appear as pure abstractions; from a distance or viewed through lenses, they coalesce into familiar imagery.

Chris Doyle
The exhibition will present a selection of video animations and a grouping of supporting two-dimensional works by multidisciplinary artist Chris Doyle. One of the video animations included in the exhibition is Doyle's 2005 stop-action video "Flight," for which he used low-tech means to photograph himself more than 280 times to create a superman -like figure that flies through his studio before leaping out the window into the void — an apt metaphor for those among us who take chances.

MARCH 20 THROUGH JUNE 7

In Life I was Silent, In Death I Sing

The exhibition will feature a select group of regional instrument makers whose creations are enjoyed by musicians all over the world. The fine-crafted traditional guitar honings of Wayne Henderson and Tom Barr, an assortment of string-based instruments by Gerald Anderson and Spencer Strickland, and Ken Butler's cubist-inspired string instruments will be on display.

JUNE 12 THROUGH AUG. 16

Peter Henry Emerson and American Naturalistic Photography

This exhibition examines the underappreciated movement of naturalistic photography, a field that began with the work of Peter Henry Emerson in England in the late 1880s. Following Emerson's lead, many American photographers, including Edward S. Curtis, Alfred Stieglitz and Doris Ulmann, created idyllic landscapes and agrarian images. The exhibition features more than 80 images from 20 photographers inspired by the work of Emerson. Organized by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

JUNE 12 THROUGH AUG. 23

Sam Easterson: Eco-Sensing

Since 1998, Sam Easterson has placed custom-designed security cameras onto the bodies of everything from millipedes and tumbleweeds to buffaloes , moles and alligators, and the resulting 70-plus videos show their habitats as these creatures see them. Trained as both an artist and a landscape architect, Easterson uses cutting-edge remote imaging and sensing technologies to accumulate data about animals and their habitats. Easterson will be in residence during the exhibition to create a new work with a species indigenous to our region.

Reverences: Terri Dowell-Dennis and Donna Polseno

Terri Dowell-Dennis uses a variety of media to explore Southern and Appalachian craft traditions, traditional women's roles and various compelling aspects of religious texts and belief systems. Two of her recent works include a mixed-media installation dealing with the Appalachian foot-washing ceremony, and "The Genesis Project," a series of works that explores questions and insights about this ancient book of beginnings. Donna Polseno has long pursued the intersection of ancient forms, the body as a vessel and the possibilities of her material of choice, clay. Many of her recent sculptural female forms evoke the timelessness of weathered statuary.

SEPT. 4 THROUGH NOV. 2

Judith Schaechter: A Relentless Pursuit of Perfection

Displayed in light boxes, Judith Schaechter's meticulously hand-crafted stained glass assemblages evoke the age-old tradition of ecclesiastical glass while drawing inspiration from a range of contemporary sources. Like her medieval predecessors, Schaechter manipulates the intrinsic beauty of her medium and infuses each piece with a kaleidoscopic array of sumptuous color and vibrant pattern. Against these fantastic backdrops, we find an array of eccentric characters that evidence various tribulations, allowing the artist's unconscious to carefully consider these twisted tales of glorious human failings.

Alberto Gaitan: Remembrancer

For more than 25 years, Alberto Gaitan has been self-employed as a computer programmer, composer/sound artist and systems consultant. For this exhibition, Gaitan will install Remembrancer, a unique group of audience-driven painting machines triggered by data collected over the Internet or movements within the exhibition space. Over the first several weeks of the exhibition, three networked machines with robotic painters will deposit dollops of paint on three stretched panels, creating unique paintings in the process. Along with the daily development of these paintings, a field of sound will be similarly generated in response to the same data. The completed work — an accumulation of overlapping monochrome fields of color and sound — will be exhibited over the final weeks of the exhibition. This machine-mediated process provokes questions of audience, authorship and elements lost or gained in translation.

SEPT. 4 THROUGH NOV. 8

Pae White: Lisa, Bright and Dark

Los Angeles-based Pae White re combines art, architecture and design in her creations. With each work, be it sculpture, mobiles, installations or graphic design, she solves a defined spatial, intellectual or emotional problem. The exhibition highlights White's pivotal themes — the rhetoric of style, the aesthetics of domesticity with leisure, the potential of abstraction and color, and the pleasure of experimentation with materials It is organized around the opposing concepts of bright and dark to create contrasting psychological environments for the viewer. Organized by the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art .

CONCERT SERIES

Down Home and Outback 1st Saturday Concert Series

This concert series is an intimate "house concert" style of performance that provides the audience with the opportunity to interact with the performers. Each performance will take place in the Taubman Museum of Art's atrium and auditorium. Admission is $18 for Taubman Museum of Art members and $20 for non members.

• David Doucet and Scott Fore: Dec. 6, 7 to 9 p.m.
• Mike Seeger: Jan. 3, 7 to 9 p.m.
• TBA: Feb. 7, 7 to 9 p.m.
• Wayne Henderson and Helen White: March 7, 7 to 9 p.m.
• The Blue Rhythm Boys: April 4, 7 to 9 p.m.