LookSEE

Contemporary art is a primary driver of attendance and attention for art museums today. Museum goers line up for hours, online and in person, to score tickets to blockbuster exhibitions like Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms or to get into hot contemporary art museums like The Broad in Los Angeles, where you can watch the wait time tick up on a dedicated Twitter account. Contemporary art can also be a bit confusing. But the eclectic and inclusive nature of art being made today has a lot to teach us about how to experience the world we live in.

Valerie Cassel Oliver, the VMFA's curator of modern and contemporary art, shares ways to open up the experience of contemporary art and ways the art of our times provokes important conversations.

Opportunities to encounter Native American art presented with depth and nuance are rare. Significant collections and special exhibitions of Native American art are few and far between. Many of us may have a narrow view of indigenous art as historical artifacts. Hear My Voice, a VMFA exhibition currently on view, aims to change that by exploring conversations between Native American artists and their art across time, space, and cultures. I spoke with curator Johanna Minich about the ways in which the exhibition sparks this dialogue.

Aaron McIntosh is a fourth-generation quilter and multi-disciplinary artist whose work explores the intersections of material culture, family tradition, identity formation, sexuality, and desire. Using quilting, sculpture, and other artistic practices as a material dialect, he examines images and cultural artifacts to construct his own complicated narrative as a nerdy Appalachian queer guy.

Why do people collect art? I’ve wondered what inspires people to spend time and money filling their homes, and sometimes private galleries and even warehouses, with works of art. Is it prestige? A desire to be a part of a creative endeavor? An effort to engage with a community of artists? Is it an obsession? An investment? Or something else all together? The New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman wrote that the consolation of art comes in many forms. For some, it is making; for others it is having. Collecting art can be a creative act, when done with thought, curiosity and passion, and maybe with a little bit of obsession thrown in. This week, we visited the home of Ted Elmore to talk about what inspires him to collect art.

Nate Young is a Chicago-based artist who is best known for his exquisite work with wood. I think his work can best be called conceptually narrative. It is inspired by personal recollection, oral history, and family relics, among other things, but this story cannot be seen directly in Nate’s work. It’s more accurate to say that it can be felt, sensed, intuited. Recollection, an exhibition of Nate's newest work at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, is spare and ethereal. The objects in the show tell a story, about family and identity and memory, and they are also about myth and mysticism. You don’t see this work so much as feel it.

When John Freyer spoke at TEDxRVA, he was the only speaker to roll a large tricycle bike onto the stage while drinking ice water from a blue Mason jar. John’s many projects have appeared in many places, from New York City galleries to the Richmond Street Art Festival. Recently, he even took his fancy bike and Recovery Roast coffee to the Capitol Square and shared a cup with Governor Terry McAullife. His work involves performance, film and video, photography, and social practice. He also teaches at VCU and mentors and advises groups that support college students who are in recovery from addiction. At any one moment, it seems, he has five things going. But the connection is always the thing.

This week, I went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to talk with Michael Taylor, the museum’s chief curator and deputy director for art and education. Michael is a relative newcomer to Richmond, and he doesn't take this jewel of an art museum for granted. We talked about the ways that museums are changing, as people expect to experience the art and the space differently, how contemporary art is front and center, and enlivening the galleries by challenging the art history status quo.

Photographer Cynthia Henebry's photos have been on view in the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the National Portrait Gallery. But while Cynthia doesn’t shun success, it is not her true reward.The true gift is in the moment of connection between her and the person she is photographing. The picture that comes of it is a bonus. Cynthia's intuitive work explores on the complexity of childhood, the loneliness and worry as well as the sweetness and adventure. In our conversation, she talks about how her life informs her work, her way of approaching the work, and what photography is to her.