Holiday Break to Enable Tang to Prepare for New Year, Exhibitions

As the winter break nears, plans are under way for a new season of exhibitions at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery. The Tang will be closed Dec. 24 and 25, 2003, and from Jan. 1-23, 2004, while new exhibitions are installed. On Saturday, Jan. 24, the following exhibitions will be open to the public:

John Coplans: Body Parts—A Self-Portrait (through April 11). The exhibition will feature large-scale black-and-white photographs by the recently deceased artist, who for the past 20 years has photographed parts of his own aging body, reassembling them in formally provocative and startling diptychs and collages. A founding editor of Artforum magazine, Coplans left the world of criticism and curating in the early 1980s to become a much-exhibited photographic artist.

SpiNN, by Shahzia Sikander (2003, DVD with framed artwork, watercolor, dry pigment on washi paper) the “Opener 6” exhibition.

Opener 6: Shahzia Sikander: Nemesis (Jan. 24-April 11). Sixth in the Tang’s series of “Openers” designed to introduce artists and new work, this exhibition showcases Sikander’s bold blend of the ancient art of miniature painting with contemporary themes. The 34-year-old artist, born in Lahore, Pakistan, employs traditional miniature scale, technique and materials in an innovative blend of highly detailed and precise landscapes, figures, and architecture with loosely rendered forms suggestive of blood, viscera, and the body. Her works dissolve distinctions between past and present, Hindu and Islamic art, Eastern and Western cultures.

The third exhibition, titled Hair: Untangling a Social History, will open on Saturday, Jan. 31, and remain on view through June 6. Curated by Penny Jolly, the Kenan Professor of Art and Art History at the College, Hair will explore the meaning of facial, head, and body hair in Western society from the Renaissance to the present. Besides paintings, prints, and photographs, the exhibition will include wigs, Victorian hair wreaths, and early magazine and television ads. “We manipulate our hair to tell our world who we are,” explains Jolly. “Hair styles and body-hair grooming form a semiotic system, creating a series of signs legible to those in our social group.”

An opening reception celebrating all three exhibitions will take place 6-7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 31. Free and open to the public, the reception will feature a 6 p.m. performance of Out of Blue, presented by performance artist and yoga practitioner Sharmila Desai in conjunction with the Sikander exhibition.

Regular hours at the Tang are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Friday and from noon to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. The museum is closed Mondays and major holidays. Suggested donations are $5 for adults, $3 for children over 12, and $2 for senior citizens; children under 12 are admitted free. For more information on exhibitions and events, call 518-580-8080 or go to hudson2.skidmore.edu/tang.

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