remix Shakes Up Chrysler’s Contemporary Art Collection

NORFOLK, Va. – (November 2011) – The Chrysler shakes up the -isms of art history in a thought-provoking exhibition of its contemporary art collection. remix explores the art of the past few decades through 90 never- or rarely exhibited works from the Chrysler’s incredible vaults interspersed with a handful of contemporary classics regularly on view.

The exhibition shuffles the Museum’s contemporary collection through six thematic groupings that traverse time. Sections on “Identity Politics,” “Tell Me A Story: Art and Narrative,” “Mirror, Mirror: Reflections of Self,” “Remembering History,” “Inversing Reality,” and “Mediation” connect a diverse range of artists and works, and show their parallel engagements within society, culture, and the visual arts.

Works of art include those by Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Christian Boltanski, Eduardo Paolozzi, Cindy Sherman, Robert Colescott, Whitfield Lovell, Willie Cole, and Jean-Christian Bourcart, among others.

This is an ambitious undertaking by Amy Brandt, the Museum’s new McKinnon Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. “remix examines the distinct ways in which artists from many different backgrounds and generations respond to a common subject, theme or historical phenomenon,” says Brandt. “Instead of restricting an artist or work to a particular movement or period, this exhibition looks at modern and contemporary art in a fresh manner.”

remix cuts across the major art movements after World War II and questions the notion that art history must be linear. Though labels like Abstract Expressionism, Pop, modernism, and postmodernism serve as historical markers, providing a way of accounting for the broad range of artistic practices of the past century, the history of art is constantly changing with the influx of new ideas and scholarship. Some artists and their work do not fit succinctly into such categories, and some movements were not as neatly packaged as art history books would suggest. At the same time, the arena of contemporary art, with its myriad of artists and artistic practices from all across the globe, has become a more complex terrain to navigate. “remix delves into and explores these undiscovered areas. I hope this show allows the public to see the Chrysler’s outstanding collection in a new light,” Brandt says.

The Chrysler Museum of Art is one of America’s most distinguished mid-sized art museums with a world-class collection of more than 30,000 objects, including one of the great glass collections in America and the new Chrysler Museum Glass Studio. The Museum is located at 245 West Olney Road in Norfolk. The Museum and Glass Studio are open Wednesdays, 10 a.m.-9 p.m.; Thursdays-Saturdays, 10 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sundays, noon-5 p.m. The campus is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, as well as major holidays. Admission to the Museum’s collection and the Glass Studio is free. For exhibitions, programming and special events, visit chrysler.org or call 757-664-6200. 

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