Faculty promotions 2017
Congratulations to Wake Forest faculty who have received promotions, effective July 1.
Categories: University Announcement
August 2016 faculty milestones
See a list of faculty milestones for August 2016: Read more
Categories: Faculty News, University Announcement
WFU Student Union Art Collection on exhibit at SECCA
The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art is hosting “With Open Eyes,” an exhibition featuring nearly 60 works selected from Wake Forest University’s Student Union Collection of Contemporary Art. The exhibition will run through Oct. 2. Admission is free.
Works on display are from among the more than 160 pieces purchased by students during University sponsored student art-buying trips that have taken place every four years since 1963.
The buying program, where students are given the opportunity to make the final decisions about which works of art will be added to the University’s collection, is believed to be the only one of its kind in the country. The goal is for the students to use the available funds to purchase works that reflect the current times. From Picasso’s L’Ecuyere (1960) to Jasper Johns’ Flags (1967-68) to Alex Katz’s Vincent with Open Mouth (1970), to Keith Haring’s Untitled (1982), to Christian Marclay’s Memento (Hearing is Believing) (2008) the collection include paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture, and photography.
During the 2013 trip, students purchased three photographic works: “Grazing Incidence Spectrometer” by Thomas Struth; “Lightning Fields 143” by Hiroshi Sugimoto; and Andrew Moore’s “Courtyard, Cass Tech High.”
Students participating in the trip are selected through a competitive application process. After much study, research and debate, the group hones in on artists whose work they like. They write to galleries asking to see what works are currently on the market by these artists. During the trip, they view the top choices, negotiate with gallery owners and decide as a group which works will become the newest additions to the collection.
“Over the course of their experience, students learn not only about choosing and purchasing contemporary art, they learn about themselves,” says art professor Jay Curley. “When they start the process of preparing for the trip, they are overwhelmed and slightly intimidated by the New York gallery world. By the end, they are on their mobile phones walking through Chelsea bargaining with these same galleries.”
Curley and associate teaching professor Leigh Ann Hallberg will be leading the 2017 trip next spring.
Mark Reece (’49), who was dean of men and College Union adviser, developed the idea for the trip before the University even had an art department. In 1963, Reece, and then faculty members Ed Wilson (’43) and J. Allen Easley and two students drove to New York City, explored the contemporary art galleries there, and came back with a dozen works of art for the University.
Learn more about the Wake Forest University art-buying trip by watching this three-minute excerpt from the exhibition video.
SECCA is located at 750 Marguerite Drive off Reynolda Rd., just five minutes from Wake Forest.
Categories: University Announcement
Hallberg to teach drawing class at SECCA
The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) presents “Ways of Looking: Summer Drawing Retreat” on Thursday, Aug. 14. The event will be held from 4 to 8 p.m. at SECCA. Registration is required.
Wake Forest University professor and artist Leigh Ann Hallberg will lead the workshop on observational drawing. “The retreat will focus not only on the artist’s relationship with subject matter,” say Hallberg, “but also on the subject matter’s relationship with materials and methodologies.” Chiaroscuro, careful observation, blind drawing, visual communication and line quality are a few of the topics that will be discussed throughout the evening.
Categories: Events, Faculty News
Earthquakes and exhibitions in Italy
Lecturer in Art Leigh Ann Hallberg plans December opening for Revenants
With funding from the Hoak Family Fellowship, senior lecturer in art Leigh Ann Hallberg sculpted eight enormous iron heads with connective netting, then shipped them to Italy for a public art exhibition.
When speaking about the sculpture series, entitled Revenants, Hallberg frequently mentions the serendipity inherent in their creation.
She says that in casting, “the process was rudimentary and subject to happenstance, which I embrace as metaphor, and irregularities become part of the product.”
However, when choosing a location for the Revenants’ first exhibition, Hallberg left nothing to chance.
The Rocca Possente di Stellata, a fortress dating from the mid-1500s near Ferrara, Italy, seemed perfect. Its long history recalled for Hallberg the sculptures’ ancient Roman inspiration, while its location along a border and site of frequent disputes echoed the theme of boundaries and permeability their hollow eyes and tentacle-like rope netting are meant to evoke.
She explains, “The heads symbolize humanity, and the nets both tie them together and allow permeability. They force viewers to reflect on the location’s history and situate the viewer within that history.”
When Hallberg finalized the location at the Rocca in May, she thought the four-year-long process of creating the Revenants was over. They were ready to be revealed in August of 2012.
Two days after Hallberg left Italy, on May 20, a 6.0 earthquake rumbled through the Emilia-Romagna region, toppling both ancient and modern buildings, claiming 24 lives, and cracking the foundation and roof of the Rocca di Stellata. Read more
Categories: Faculty News
