New Slovenian Art (Novi kolektivizem and Ljubljana), Krst Pod Triglavom (Baptism under Triglav), 1986, Cankajarev Dom Culture and Congress Centre, Ljubljana, screen print on paper, Bates College Museum of Art. Submitted photo
The Bates College Museum of Art presents two programs that complement two of its current exhibitions and provide in-depth discussions about the artists and works in the collection. The events are free and open to the public.
Director and Chief Curator Dan Mills will give a lecture on renowned artist Saul Steinberg to accompany the exhibition “Saul Steinberg: Brilliant Witty Inventive Cerebral” on Thursday, September 5th at 4:30 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center, Room 104. Following the lecture, the annual welcome reception on campus will be held in the galleries starting at 5:30 p.m.
Eda Čufer Submitted photo
Guest artist Eda Čufer will participate in a discussion with Marina Filipovic, who teaches Russian at Bates, on Thursday, September 19, at 4:30 p.m. in the Olin Arts Center, Room 104. Their conversation will cover topics related to the exhibition “New Slovenian Art | Monumental Spectacular,” including avant-garde art practices in late 20th-century Yugoslavia.
Both exhibits can be seen until October 5th.
September 5: Dan Mills on Saul Steinberg
Learn more about the fascinating and multi-talented artist Saul Steinberg (born 1914 in Romania, died 1999 in New York) in this lecture by Dan Mills, Art Director of the Museum of Art at Bates College.
Steinberg is known worldwide for his drawings reproduced in New York magazine. From the 1940s to the late 1990s, he created over 80 cover illustrations and 1200 internal drawings for the magazine, many of which have been repeatedly reprinted since then. Over the course of his long career, Steinberg also created collages, drawings, murals, paintings, prints, and sculptures. This lecture will discuss Steinberg’s work in a variety of media; his biography, including his difficult childhood and turbulent early adult years in Romania and Italy before moving to the United States; and how he gave graphic definition to life after World War II, often tearing down the facade of civilization in the process.
Director and artist Dan Mills’ curatorial focus is contemporary art. His broad intellectual and aesthetic interests have shaped 30 years of adventurous international curatorial programs at several academic museums. Mills is known for collaborating with scholars and artists on major projects to explore a wide range of topics. At Bates, these have included contemporary indigenous art (with an indigenous artist); the Anthropocene (with environmental studies); psychological figurative painting and sculpture (studio art); contemporary art by Saudi artists (anthropology); and Vietnamese shamanic art (art history).
Exhibitions he has curated or co-curated have been shown at over 50 institutions, including Brown University, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Williams College. Mills has been a frequent guest lecturer/panelist at institutions such as the Chicago Cultural Center, Wake Forest University, and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and a visiting critic at the Herron School of Art, Stanford University, and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.
Mills exhibits his work frequently, most recently in solo exhibitions at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland; Herron School of Art + Design, Indianapolis; and Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston. His work has been shown internationally, including at the Anchorage Museum, Alaska; Long March Space, Factory 798, Beijing; and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco. Since 2010 he has been director of the art museum and lecturer in the humanities at Bates College.
September 19: Eda Čufer discussion with Marina Filipovic
Eda Čufer is a dramaturge, curator, author and professor of contemporary art history and theory. In 1984 she co-founded the art collective New Slovenian Art (NSK) based in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Between 2005 and 2020 she lived in the USA, where she taught art history and theory at the Maine College of Art and Design. Her research and writings focus on the ideologies of contemporary art, particularly the relationship of political and technological systems to art systems.
Marina Filipovic received her MA in Slavic Languages and Literatures from the University of Illinois at Chicago, specializing in Russian and Yugoslav literatures, and her PhD in Russian Literature and Film from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Marina’s teaching covers topics from the 19th century to contemporary Russia and all periods of Soviet culture, including Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav cultures. She studies literature, film, technology, gender, avant-garde, socialist realism, and the history of science.
“The museum is delighted that Eda Čufer is travelling from Slovenia to Bates to engage with our communities here to explore the complex issues raised by the NSK collective,” says Samantha Sigmon, curator of the NSK exhibition. “For Eda, speaking with a Bates professor who has many ties and interests is a unique experience that should not be missed.”
New Slovenian Art emerged in 1984 from the industrial band Laibach, the Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre and the visual artist collective IRWIN. A loose organisation of like-minded creatives active in the last decade of communist Yugoslavia, they imitated the language and format of authoritarian regimes and bureaucracy through their repetitive symbols and an eclectic palette of iconography, allusions and references. New Slovenian Art | Monumental Spectacular is an exhibition of NSK prints from the museum collection and selected multimedia elements, predominantly from the 1980s, that re-examine the complexities of Slovenian, Eastern European and global history to bring to light the entanglement of art with power at a time when Slovenia was caught between nationalist, capitalist and communist ideologies.
The Bates Museum of Art, located in the Olin Arts Center at 75 Russell St., Lewiston, is a preeminent cultural center that supports the mission, values and aspirations of Bates College. As a teaching museum at a liberal arts college, the Museum of Art brings forth a world of ideas through its exhibitions, collections, stewardship and interpretation to enhance the vitality of the intellectual and cultural life of Bates, the surrounding communities and beyond. Admission to the Museum is always free and is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Mondays and Wednesdays until 7:30 p.m. from September through May. For more information, visit bates.edu/museum.
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