2019 June Press Releases

Plains Art Museum Presents Third Space: New Work by Liza Sylvestre

Press Release
For Immediate Release (June 2019)

Fargo, N.D. – Plain Art Museum is thrilled to announce a solo exhibition titled Third Space, featuring new work by Minnesota-based emerging artist Liza Sylvestre. The exhibition, which opened on June 4, 2019, is on display in the Xcel Energy Gallery located on the Museum’s 2nd floor through August 10, 2019.

Exploring the ways in which senses alter experience and perception, Liza Sylvestre’s work operates at the intersection of our senses and communication. Experiencing life with progression into deafness as a child and later implanted with a bionic computer-ear, her definitions of language and communication are continuously shifting. Sylvestre’s multidisciplinary work is personal yet social, and empathic yet layered. Third Space includes recent video work and drawings by Sylvestre that investigate her interaction with music, the written word, and verbal communication.

Liza Sylvestre is an artist and educator living in Minneapolis, MN. Sylvestre received her BA in Fine Art from the University of Minnesota and a recent MFA from University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. She has exhibited her work nationally and has been the recipient of numerous awards, commissions, and scholarships.

The public is also invited to Sylvestre’s artist talk on Thursday, August 6, 2019, at 6:00 pm where she will introduce her multidisciplinary work exploring the intersection of our senses and communications and challenging normative design. Following the artist talk she will lead a “blind tour” at Plains Art Museum as a part of her inclusion in the Museum’s landmark exhibition, The Other Four. During this unique experience, participants will wear a pair of low vision simulator glasses while Sylvestre leads a guided, visual description tour through the galleries.

Plains Art Museum is the largest art museum in the Dakotas and Western Minnesota and is general admission free thanks to strong and growing support from over 800 households and businesses. The Museum manages a permanent collection of over 4,000 objects, organizes and presents dozens of annual exhibitions, facilitates public art projects, and leads over 200 educational programs and experiences for all ages each year. The Museum, and its Katherine Kilbourne Burgum Center for Creativity, is located at 704 First Avenue North in downtown Fargo. For more information about visiting or supporting your art museum, visit plainsart.org.

Contact: Andrew J. Maus, Director & CEO, 701.551.6123, amaus@plainsart.org

Plains Art Museum Celebrates Women Artist with New Exhibition, Generation

Press Release
For Immediate Release (June 2019)

Fargo, N.D. – Despite decades of critique, direct activism, and multiple waves of feminist art movements, artworks in the collections of art museums around the world – including Plains Art Museum – are proportionately dominated by men. On Tuesday, June 4, 2019, Plains Art Museum opened a new exhibition titled, Generation: Women Artists in the Plains Art Museum Collection. The exhibition is displayed in the Jane L. Stern Gallery, located on it’s 1st floor, until March 22, 2020.

Generation will explore the Museum’s acquisitions of artwork by women since our inception as the Red River Art Center in 1965. Weaving socio-political movements and regional trends through the museum’s collecting history, we reflect on gender disparities while pledging support to encourage and accelerate gender equity. In addition, we will highlight important artistic achievements – some known and many under-recognized. Featured artists include Hazel Belvo, Catherine Mulligan, Maria Cristina Tavera, Gail Kendall, Louise Nevelson, Hollis Sigler, and Kay WalkingStick..

You are invited to join the community to celebrate Generation at the Museum’s Summer Exhibition Reception on Thursday, July 25 from 7:00 – 9:00 pm. This party, featuring live music, great food and a cash bar, is free for members, partners, and Native Artists and only $10 for nonmembers and $5 for students. In addition, the Museum will host a talk with the curators on Thursday, June 13, which is free and open to the public thanks to the support of PlainsArt4All members and donors.

Plains Art Museum is the largest art museum in the Dakotas and Western Minnesota and is general admission free thanks to strong and growing support from over 800 households and businesses. The Museum manages a permanent collection of over 4,000 objects, organizes and presents dozens of annual exhibitions, facilitates public art projects, and leads over 200 educational programs and experiences for all ages each year. The Museum, and its Katherine Kilbourne Burgum Center for Creativity, is located at 704 First Avenue North in downtown Fargo. For more information about visiting or supporting your art museum, visit plainsart.org.

Contact: Andrew J. Maus, Director & CEO, 701.551.6123, amaus@plainsart.org

Plains Art Museum Opens Innovative New Exhibition, The Other Four

Press Release
For Immediate Release (June 2019)

Fargo, N.D. – With rare exceptions, art objects are created to be experienced visually. The Other Four is an exhibition experience that negates the visually dominant art experience hierarchy by presenting artwork designed specifically to engage the other four senses. The Other Four opens on Thursday June 13, 2019, and will be displayed in the William and Anna Jane Schlossman Gallery, located on the Museum’s third floor until November 30, 2019.

The Other Four is a truly innovative project and, to the knowledge of its curators, the first of its kind in an art museum anywhere. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to touch the other side of the world, listen to conversations in the walls of the museum, feel and react to life-like cellular signals through handheld mechanical devices, and listen to unique sounds emitted by each planet in our solar system. Guest-Curated by John Schuerman, The Other Four captures the spirit of regionally-based avant-garde artists who are experimenting and producing non-visual, sensory art. Artists include Pedram Baldari, David Bowen, Kate Casanova, Irve Dell, Wendy Fernstrum, Alison Hiltner, Nooshin Hakim Javadi, Yevgeniya Kaganovich, Aida Shahghasemi, Ken Steinbach, and Liza Sylvestre.

John Schuerman is an independent curator, self-taught artist, and former gallery director of Instinct Art Gallery in Minneapolis. He received his masters of liberal studies at Hamline University, St. Paul, MN, and has had a successful career as artist and curator since producing exhibitions on topics such as environmentalism, gender perspectives, identity, medication, money, and overpopulation.

Along with the exhibition the museum staff is baking bread at noon on the last Thursday of the months June-November, and hosting a performance, “Eyes Should Be Washed” on Thursday July 25 at 6:00 pm in conjunction with the Museum’s Summer Exhibition Reception.

Plains Art Museum is the largest art museum in the Dakotas and Western Minnesota and is general admission free thanks to strong and growing support from over 800 households and businesses. The Museum manages a permanent collection of over 4,000 objects, organizes and presents dozens of annual exhibitions, facilitates public art projects, and leads over 200 educational programs and experiences for all ages each year. The Museum, and its Katherine Kilbourne Burgum Center for Creativity, is located at 704 First Avenue North in downtown Fargo. For more information about visiting or supporting your art museum, visit plainsart.org.

Contact: Andrew J. Maus, Director & CEO, 701.551.6123, amaus@plainsart.org

Plains Art Museum Holds 5th Annual Art Sale

Press Release
For Immediate Release (June 2019)

Fargo, ND – Plains Art Museum will hold its fifth annual Summer Art Sale from June 27 – 29 at the Museum’s Katherine Kilbourne Center for Creativity. The sale includes work from many select local and regional artists including jewelry prints, photography, with a primary focus on pottery and ceramics. Artwork will be available for purchase on June 27 from 9:00 am – 9:00 pm, and June 28 & 29 from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm. Proceeds support participating artists and the Robert Kurkowski Ceramic Studio in the Center for Creativity. The Museum will also host a members-only wine and cheese preview party on Wednesday, June 26 from 7:00 – 9:00 pm. At the event, Museum members will get the first look at available artwork of the over two dozen professional and emerging artists represented from throughout the region.

For more information email James Wolberg at jwolberg@plainsart.org or on our website at plainsart.org.

Plains Art Museum is the largest art museum in the Dakotas and Western Minnesota and is general admission free thanks to strong and growing support from over 800 households and businesses. The Museum manages a permanent collection of over 4,000 objects, organizes and presents dozens of annual exhibitions, facilitates public art projects, and leads over 200 educational programs and experiences for all ages each year. The Museum and its Katherine Kilbourne Burgum Center for Creativity is located at 704 First Avenue North in downtown Fargo.

For more information about visiting or supporting your art museum, visit plainsart.org.

Contact: Andrew J. Maus, Director & CEO, 701.551.6123, amaus@plainsart.org