STAN DOUGLAS
THEN AND NOW
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
2400 Third Avenue South - Minneapolis
11/10/2012 - 13/2/201
Stan Douglas: Then and Now inaugurates the MIA's fourth season of its "New Pictures" series. Opening October 11, the two-part exhibition presents six of Douglas's large-scale photographs examining both past and present. Three prints that restage historical moments of social conflict are on display in the Linda and Lawrence Perlman Gallery (368) for the "Then" section; three recent "straight" photos of accumulated objects and an artist studio are juxtaposed with artworks in the MIA's permanent collection in the "Now" section.
"Then" works include Ballantyne Pier, 18 June 1935 (2008), and Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 (2008), which create scenes from social riots that occurred in Canada during the 1930s and 1970s; and Exodus, 1975 (2012), depicting the exodus of Portuguese immigrants during the Angola revolution in 1975. "Now" features photographs of actual scenes, installed next to objects in the galleries. McLeod's Books, Vancouver, 2006 hangs in the Modernist gallery to serve as a counterpoint to the idealized goals of modernist furniture, while Old Curio Shop (2010) and Artist's Cabin (2010) are displayed near the museum's period rooms.
Since the late 1980s, Douglas has created films, photographs, and installations that reexamine particular locations or past events. His works often take their points of departure in local settings that imply broader issues. Making use of new as well as outdated technologies, Douglas appropriates existing Hollywood genres and borrows from classic literary works to recreate historical scenes. Douglas received the prestigious Infinity Award for Art by the International Center for Photography in 2012. His works have been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including in three Venice Biennales and three dOCUMENTAs.
Douglas discusses his work at the 4th Annual Arnold Newman Lecture on Thursday, October 11, at 7pm in the museum's Pillsbury Auditorium. Generous support for the "New Pictures" series is provided by the W. Duncan and Nivin Macmillan Foundation. The Arnold Newman Lecture Series is made possible thanks to a generous gift from the Arnold and Augusta Newman Foundation.
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), home to one of the finest encyclopedic art collections in the country, houses more than 80,000 works of art representing 5,000 years of world history. Highlights of the permanent collection include European masterworks by Rembrandt, Poussin, and van Gogh; modern and contemporary painting and sculpture by Picasso, Matisse, Mondrian, Stella, and Close; as well as internationally significant collections of prints and drawings, decorative arts, Modernist design, photographs, textiles, and Asian, African, and Native American art.
