Events

Save the date! Friday, August 31, Members Reception for Improvisations in Time: Eugene J. Martin and the Masur Museum of Art (August 4 – October 20, 2012).

6 – 7 pm: Special Event for Patrons and Donors only. If you are a Patron level member or higher, please join us at this exclusive event for a champagne toast. Meet Eugene Martin’s widow Suzanne Fredericq, who will join us from Lafayette to speak about her husband. If you are not sure of your level of membership, please give us a call.

7 – 9 pm: Members reception. Join us for the reception for all levels of museum membership. If you are not a museum member, call us to join!

7:30 pm: Gallery Talk with Eugene Martin scholar Marie Vinouze. Marie earned her M.A. in the History of Art at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, and is the preeminent Martin scholar.  She will travel from Paris, France to speak about Martin’s art and our exhibition. Vinouze is an exhibition coordinator at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

The Masur Museum of Art is excited to announce the recent acquisition of twenty-four works of art from the estate of the artist Eugene J. Martin. The Masur’s exhibition celebrates Martin’s legacy as a visual artist in Louisiana and around the world.  Martin studied painting at the Corcoran School of Art and Design in Washington D.C.  His often humorous and highly abstract paintings, collages, drawings, and photographs primarily deal with the concepts of time and memory.  He has exhibited at Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art, MS; Louisiana State University Museum of Art, LA; Walter Anderson Museum of Art, MS; New Orleans African American Museum, LA; Lilly Gallery, Duke University; and Michel Rooryck Gallery, Ghent, Belgium.  Martin’s art also resides in the permanent collections of the Munich Museum of Modern Art, Munich, Germany; Ogden Museum of Southern Art, LA; University of Delaware Museums, DE; Schomburg Center for Black Culture, NY; Sheldon Museum of Art, NE; and Stowitts Museum, CA

On the surface, Eugene J. Martin’s work appears to be an after-the-fact riff on modernism driven abstraction. His work is related to this tradition, but is something more. Martin was an accomplished Jazz musician and incorporated his experience of rhythmic improvisation also associated with High Modernism or Abstract Expressionism as a means of illustrating the irregular, non-linear, but cyclical manner humans perceive, understand, and experience the world around them. He used biomorphic and quasi-mechanical abstractions to create this link with the physical perceived world, but warped them to reference the slipstream nature of consciousness as well. The improvisational language Martin ascribed to any moment or period of time plays back into how he considered his oeuvre. He conceived of it as fluid and let it be guided directly by variables such as access to art making materials dictated by his financial means, a passing interest in any given media or subject matter, and his mood. He would also muddle the chronology of his work by creating new work to add on to old pieces, dismantle a completed artwork and incorporate it into several works, or do the same with photographs of his art. This totally integrated art practice is what makes Martin stand apart from other artists; his improvisations were rigorous and permeated his entire decision making process.

The Masur Museum of Art Presents: The 49th Annual Juried Competition Open to the Public May 12 – July 21, 2012, Sponsored by Century Link. Members’ & Artists’ Preview Reception All accepted artists and their guests are welcome. Saturday, May 12, 6 – 8 p.m. Juror’s Gallery Talk featuring Liza Simone, Founding Director of Phantom Galleries Los Angeles Saturday, May 12, 6:30 p.m. The Masur Museum of Art’s Juried Competition has served as a venue for innovation in contemporary art for nearly half a century and has featured both locally and nationally renowned artists. This year’s competition features 62 artists from 23 states!

Best in Show:
Matthew Dercole. if you are in my dreams where will the flies nest, 2011. Porcelain and felted wool.

Second Place (Group of 4):
Teresa Getty. take your chance, ride the pony — only one side bucks, 2011. Silver point, gouache, graphite, and oil on panel.
Joshua Chambers. Every happy family is the same-or-It’s all in the company you keep, 2011. Acrylic on panel.
Kelly Blevins. Self, 2010. Charcoal on paper.
Sharon Shapiro. Emperor’s New Clothes, 2012. Powdered graphite, collage, and colored pencil on paper.

Third Place (Group of 4):
Kate Shannon. Untitled, 2012. Digital Animation from glass slide.
Tanya Chaly. Domestic Nature – Cow, 2011. Charcoal and punctured drawing on paper.
Michael Azgour. Woman in a Cafe, 2012. Oil on canvas.
Mariestella Colon Astacio. Look Up!, 2012. Watercolor, acrylic, and crayon on canvas.

Honorable Mention (Group of 2):
John Harlan Norris. Manager, 2011. Oil on canvas.
PJ Mills. Monster, 2011. Oil on canvas.

February 9, 2012 – April 21, 2012

Five Louisiana artists, each with a different artistic approach, transform the Masur Museum’s galleries by creating large murals directly on our gallery walls. The featured artists are Troy Malmstrom, Jason Byron Nelson, Vitus Shell, Joey Slaughter, and Allen Spurlock. Their work reflects the historic importance and power of murals as a statement of prevailing cultural attitudes or as a vehicle for societal change. In doing so, their work will bring to mind the art of Diego Rivera, Banksy, Thomas Hart Benton, David Siqueiros, Shepard Fairey, and more.  Murals are often taken for granted as pleasant tableaux or are forgotten by institutions that ought to maintain this form of expression but do not because it cannot be possessed as a valuable artifact or easily displayed as part of their programming. Even though the murals cannot be maintained permanently, OUTSIDE IN acknowledges the importance of murals as a relevant public art form by bringing them to the forefront of artistic and social dialogs in Northeast Louisiana.  By doing this, the Masur Museum embraces its role as a public venue for the exchange of ideas, even if it is not broadly public in the way most venues for murals are.