Water is the subject and title of a farreaching exhibition at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, this fall.
Among the works included in the Zimmerli exhibition is Lynn Davis’ selenium toned print “Iceberg II, Disko Bay, Greenland” from 2004. Ranging from a 17th-century Chinese landscape to Bill Viola’s 2005 visceral video work, “Ablutions,” works on display are drawn from the museum’s own collections of French, American, Russian and Soviet Nonconformist art, photographs, prints, and children’s book illustrations, as well as from other public and private collections. The exhibit opened in September and runs through Jan. 2.
“Water’s precious nature, beauty and power to nurture and destroy are recurring subjects in poetry, music, dance and the visual arts throughout history,” said Suzanne Delehanty, director of the Zimmerli. “This exhibition contributes an understanding of how humankind has imagined and visualized water over the last four centuries.”
Featured in the exhibition are more than 90 works of art spanning cultures and a variety of media. Highlights from the Zimmerli collection include John Kensett’s lapidary “View of the Shrewsbury River, New Jersey” and Milton Avery’s serene “Inner Harbor.” Other works include Haitian artist Amena Simeon’s brightly beaded flags portraying “Mami Wata;” a rare Yoruban ritual vessel; Lynn Davis’ magisterial selenium-toned photograph “Iceberg II, Disko Bay, Greenland,” and Atul Bhalla’s 20-part photographic installation grid of New Delhi’s historic public water spigots, “Piaus.”
Edward Ruscha’s “Sea of Desire,” a threecolor etching and aquatint; Geoffrey Hendricks’ “Waiting,” a performance work in which a watercolor is immersed in water; Maya Lin’s “Dew Point,” a floor installation of glass orbs; and Wangechi Mutu’s video piece “Amazing Grace” are among the contemporary works featured.
Other works of art drawn from the museum’s collections include prints by Vija Celmins, Honoré Daumier, Paul Gauguin, Hiroshige, and Whistler; paintings by Albert Bierstadt, Johan Barthold Jongkind and NikolaiDubovskoi; and photographs by Sally Gall, Francisco Infante, Edward Steichen and George Tice.
“This exhibition also may be viewed as a showcase of the Zimmerli’s holdings. We have cut across specializations and selected many seldom-seen works, including many drawn from the museum’s unusually strong holdings of prints, and works on paper from fin de siècle France,” Delehanty said.
“Water is an issue of great importance today in the sciences and the humanities,” said Donna Gustafson, Mellon liaison for academic programs and curator at the Zimmerli. “Biologists have studied water as the source of life, and have recently been investigating how measurable climate shifts will affect life on our planet. Too much water or too little water are threats to human civilization and to many landbased life forms.”
To provide information about water in a global context, the museum created a resource room including Internet hookups to international online sites that discuss issues relevant to the study of water as a global issue. This room also provides published and digital materials, from poetry to articles about political and scientific investigations, including information about the Raritan River Initiative, which is associated with Rutgers’ Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy, and other projects.
The Zimmerli also produced an interdisciplinary cell-phone audio guide for the exhibitionwith descriptions and comments by artists, art historians, biologists, ecologists, geographers and poets. Many of the participants are faculty at Rutgers whose research or interests include water and the ways in which cultures incorporate water into their systems.
The Zimmerli Art Museum is located at Hamilton and George streets on Rutgers’ College Avenue campus. Hours are Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. Admission is $3 for adults, and free for museum members, Rutgers students, faculty and staff, and children under 18. For more information, call 732-932-7237, ext. 610, or visit www.zimmerlimuseum.rutgers.edu.