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University of Kentucky Art Museum Director Stuart Horodner. Photo by Hattie Quik
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The University of Kentukcy Art Museum is located inside the Singletary Center on the corner of Rose Street and Euclid Avenue. Photo furnished
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"Last Supper" by Edward Melcarth, currently on display at the museum.
A quick preliminary glance at Edward Melcarth’s “Points of View” – the survey of paintings, drawings and sculpture by the late Louisville-born artist currently on display at the University of Kentucky Art Museum – shows the work of a highly skilled artist employing relatively traditional techniques. Melcarth’s dramatic compositions conjure Renaissance-inspired storytelling traditions, some even featuring riffs on classic religious and mythological works.
A closer look at the exhibit, which touches on various appetites of desire and aggression, reveals deeper levels of complexity and intrigue. A candidly gay, self-described Communist artist working in New York City in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, Melcarth often focused on subjects from blue collar workers to junkies and hustlers, using techniques and styles gleaned from Old Masters. Many of his works feature subtle (or not-so-subtle) undertones of gay erotica. His interpretations of “The Rape of the Sabine Women” and “The Last Supper” resemble, respectively, a violent scene from “West Side Story” and a drunken brawl in a New York diner.
In short, the exhibit hits lots of marks of the museum’s evolved – and evolving – “diet,” as prescribed by executive director Stuart Horodner, who joined the staff in 2014. Straddling the juxtaposition between traditional and contemporary, it engages its audience on several different levels, inviting them to look beyond the surface and make deeper connections to both historic events and current issues.It also champions the work of a contemporary, Kentucky-born artist – a tenet Horodner said he felt the museum had a very “modest relationship” with when he first came on board. Even though the Melcarth exhibit wasn’t originally part of the museum’s plans for this year, as soon as the work was made available, the museum “quickly made space for it,” Horodner said.
“This is a really crazy, masterful show that we’re happy to be the first museum to be showing,” he added.
Raised in New York City by art-loving parents, Horodner grew up surrounded by galleries and museums. He studied art at Cooper Union and at Rutgers University with the intention of becoming an artist himself, but early on, his career took him down the path of arts administration: managing galleries, writing about art and teaching. He owned his own gallery in New York City for a stint before going on to help manage galleries and art institutions in Portland, Oregon, western Pennsylvania and Atlanta, where he most recently served as artistic director for the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center.
Having spent the bulk of his career dealing primarily with contemporary artists, Horodner has been working to steadily increase the museum’s focus on contemporary works and relationships with living artists – but he also recognizes that maintaining a steady balance is key for the museum.
“I love contemporary – I live and breathe it – but on the same token, I grew up surrounded by museums and [I know] we need to run [the gamut] from the traditional to the radical,” he said. “If we don’t show the traditional or help serve the traditional, we probably aren’t serving part of our mission. But we also want to be able to say, ‘there’s a lot of dynamic, more progressive, more mind-shaking work that’s been made.’”
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The 2017 exhibit “Singularities” by contemporary artist Mike McKay is one example of outside-the-box programming that Horodner has helped bring to the museum since coming on board as its executive director in 2014. Photo furnished
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The University of Kentucky Art Museum seeks to strike a balance between showcasing traditional and radical works. The 2016 exhibit “Saving Myself,” featuring pieces from late Lexington artist Louis Bickett’s personal collections, falls into the latter category. Photo furnished
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The University of Kentucky Art Museum seeks to strike a balance between showcasing traditional and radical works. The 2016 exhibit “Saving Myself,” featuring pieces from late Lexington artist Louis Bickett’s personal collections, falls into the latter category. Photo furnished
This careful look at the balance of what the museum offers – its “diet” – has been one of Horodner’s central focuses.
“That to me is really about the best challenge to what any museum is doing – what’s the diet of the offerings?”he said.
In many ways, Horodner has flipped the museum’s diet – its approaches, processes and offerings – on its head over the past three years. Changes under his leadership range from removing the museum’s admission fee to revamping its entire approach to presenting artworks. The transformation is all part of a larger effort to make the museum more usable and relevant to its potential audience – which Horodner identified early on was not using the museum in the ways he felt they could or should be.
As a university institution that also happens to function as Lexington’s primary art museum, it’s important that the museum target both the campus community and Lexington’s larger art community at the same time, he said.
“You have to have reason for both of those core groups of constituents to want to come and want to come actively,” he said. “Both of those communities were not coming nearly as actively as I thought they could.”
Horodner’s first visit to Lexington, several years before the executive director position at the museum opened up, might be one of the most glaring examples of the disconnect he noted between the university’s museum and its art community. He was artistic director at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center at the time, when his friend, artist and UK faculty member Rae Goodwin, invited him to come give a lecture at the University of Kentucky. Horodner recalls being entertained during that visit by art faculty members, who took him to several local art institutions.
Though he didn’t think much of it at the time, one art institution was notably missing from both the itinerary and the overall conversation.
“I’m with all the UK art faculty, and nobody takes me to the museum. Nobody mentions the museum,” Horodner recalled. “For one reason or another, it was not engaging them. … At the end of the day, with few exceptions, the museum was not a tool for the advancement of them and their teaching at that time.”
When Goodwin sent Horodner a posting advertising a job opening a few years later, Horodner said he was attracted to the job for a couple different of reasons – he liked the small and intimate nature of the museum, which he felt lent itself to being able to work hands-on with a collaborative staff. But he was also attracted to its potential for growth and positive change.
“I’ve never gone to work at a place, honestly, that was so spectacularly successful already that I had nothing to contribute,” he said. “I’ve tended to work at places that I think, ‘Wow, this has more potential’ …. mostly what it needs is a fresh vision and a lot of energy.”
From the beginning, Horodner’s vision has focused largely on identifying obstacles in the way of the museum’s rhythm and setting about to change them. Those obstacles, he noted, ranged from parking challenges and a relatively static approach to presenting works, to a lack of clear communication to the public about what the museum actually was.
“When you start tallying all of those obstacles, they can become collectively fairly formidable,” he said.
For decades prior to Horodner’s arrival, the museum’s approach to presenting works veered largely toward safe and traditional. Popular, high-quality traveling exhibits – exhibits that “it thought Lexington wanted to see” – were rotated several times a year, and the museum maintained a relatively unchanging display of 100 or so works from its permanent collection, which contains nearly 5,000 pieces that had rarely, if ever, been seen by the public.
Now, rather than primarily bringing in traveling collections that have originated elsewhere, the museum carefully curates most of its rotating exhibits, oftentimes introducing the debut presentation of a collection. And in perhaps one of the most noticeable changes among regular attendees, where the museum once maintained a largely static display of works from its permanent collection, those pieces are now rotated regularly. A handful of new exhibits, organized thematically and featuring works from the permanent collection, are hung several times a year, typically in conjunction with the installation of a new rotating exhibit. Works owned by the museum that are currently on display include a portrait of James Joyce by Andy Warhol and a screen print by Romare Bearden to a sketch by Marcel Duchamp, which is hung next to a work by beloved local artist Arturo Sandoval.
“When we change things, [we are] changing out so much of the permanent collection that quite often it feels like we are rehanging the whole museum, three or four times a year,” said Horodner.
He admits the labor-intensive approach to changing out the walls “can feel a bit crazy” – and also admits that not every change he has imparted has been met without some pushback from some of the museum’s longtime patrons. Many, for example, miss being able to see “In the Pasture” – Julien Dupré’s famous 1883 depiction of a young girl in a field trying to tame a cow, which has become widely considered one of the museum’s signature pieces. (The painting is in storage to make way for other works.)
Resistance to the changes, however, has largely been overshadowed by positive response from the museum’s audience and staff members. Among the champions of the new energy Horodner has imparted to the museum is its curator Janie Welker, who has been with the museum for 13 years.
“I am finally getting to do the kind of work I love – putting together shows with work from outside as well as the collection,” Welker said. “So many people have told me how surprised and delighted they are to discover what a wide range of great works we have in the permanent collection.”
Dramatic shifts in audience metrics under Horodner’s leadership further reveal the positive reception of this new approach. According to a “Three Year Progress Report” released in 2017, overall museum attendance is up by 50 percent since 2014. Audience diversity has increased by 5 percent in that time, and tours from university classes and other community groups have gone up by more than 80 percent.
“We are so much more a part of the university now,” said Welker, adding that engaging students and professors and connecting with them intellectually are some of the most exciting facets of working in a university museum.
It’s fitting then that making connections is one of Horodner’s primary interests.
“The thing I’m probably most interested in, if I had to boil it down, is artistic legacies, connections between the past and the present,” he said, adding that, “you don’t get that if you only work in the contemporary realm.”
According to Welker, making connections is also one of Horodner’s strong points.
“My favorite nickname for Stuart is Sparky. Of course, I’m being a bit flippant, but it’s also a quite serious tribute – there is nothing he likes better than sparking ideas and connections,” she said. “His mind never ceases to amaze me. But don’t tell him I said that.”
Visit this article online to check out a new short documentary about the University of Kentucky Art Museum, created in collaboration among the museum, VisitLex and Cornett.
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"Rape of the Sabines" by Edward Melcarth. "Points of View," an exhibit featuring works from the last Louisville-born artist, is on display through April 8.
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"Danae and OD with Cat" by Edward Melcarth
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"Motorcyclists" by Edward Melcarth
University of Kentucky Art Museum: Exhibits and Events
The University of Kentucky Art Museum is located inside the Singletary Center for the Arts, 405 Rose St.
Gallery hours: Tues.-Thurs.: 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Fri., 10 a.m.-8 p.m.; Sat.-Sun, noon- 5 p.m. Closed Mondays and university holidays
The following exhibits are on display through April 8, 2018 (except where noted):
Edward Melcarth: Points of View. This survey of paintings, drawings and sculpture by Edward Melcarth allows a chance to assess and appreciate the Louisville-born artist (1914-1973), who left Kentucky to pursue his personal interests and career. Working in the heyday of abstract expressionism and, later, pop art, Melcarth maintained a commitment to figurative imagery and techniques gleaned from the Old Masters. This exhibit looks at Melcarth’s subject matter and his exploration of masculinity, religion, portraiture, drug use and the American “scene.”
Looking at Men. This presentation of works from the museum’s permanent collection examines how artists including Van Deren Coke, David Hilliard, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and others have pictured men from varied social, economic and cultural backgrounds at different points in time. As the behavior of prominent male figures in public positions undergoes strong scrutiny in this country, this look at images featuring a variety of masculine identities – fathers, sons, laborers, soldiers, artists and athletes – offers an opportunity to appreciate differences and common ground.
Modern Women. This exhibition featuring works from the museum’s permanent collection examines how women were perceived and represented from the early 1900s to the mid-1930s. The exhibit features works from Berenice Abbott, Eugene Atget, Edward Fisk, Marie Laurencin, Jaques Villon and others.
R.C. May Photography Lecture Series: Dan Estabrook. Employing 19th-century photographic techniques and visual tropes, Estabrook creates intimate images that are both deeply personal and universal. He often alters photographs – adding paint or emulsion to salt prints, or cutting away parts of tintypes – so that each work is unique. On display through April 1.
Water Ways. Water is associated with epic journeys in literature and life, from “The Odyssey” to an immigrant’s arrival in a new world. The element of water is essential to life, in both symbolic and literal ways, and artists have long been lured by its song. The exhibit of works from the museum’s collection offers the opportunity to examine water in the context of travel, work, leisure and other themes, through diverse works by artists who include Romare Bearden, Emil Furst, Louis-Gabriel-Eugene Isabey, Shoda Koho, James McNeill Whistler and others.
February Events at the Museum
- Robert C. May Photography Lecture Series: Dan Estabrook. Feb. 2. The New York-based photographer will give a lecture on his work as part of the long-running series established by late Lexington photographer Robert C. May. 4 p.m., Singletary Center Recital Hall.
- Thriving Artists Series: Lexington Deconstructed. Feb. 21. The second installment of a new series of free, candid conversations about the internal and external motivations for making art, facilitated by museum director Stuart Horodner. 6-8 p.m., University of Kentucky Art Museum.
- Family Day Workshop. Feb. 24. Educator Jarah Jones of ARTplay Children’s Studio will present a unique portrait session, allowing parents and children an opportunity to concentrate on how to best draw each other for maximum emotion. All ages welcome; materials provided. 12-1 p.m., University of Kentucky Art Museum.