Nasher Sculpture Center

 

DALLAS, Texas (August 1, 2011) – Internationally renowned visual and performance artist Nick Cave, who was recently announced as the artist-in-residence for the University of North Texas Institute for the Advancement of the Arts in the 2011-2012 academic year, will be the featured speaker at the annual Nasher Lecture Series presented by the UNT College of Visual Arts and Design at the Nasher Sculpture Center.

 

The Nasher Lecture will take place on Tuesday, October 11 at 7 pm at the Nasher Sculpture Center. A reception will take place prior to the lecture at 6 pm. Tickets are free with admission, however seating is limited in Nasher Hall. Tickets are available by calling 940.565.4001.

 

Nick Cave, whose work has been called "Must Be Seen to Be Believed" by The New York Times, is renowned for his elaborate Soundsuit sculptures - wearable art made of such items as twigs, beads, sequins, Easter grass and dryer lint. When worn, his Soundsuits envelop the body, making sounds as the materials brush together.

 

“Nick Cave’s Soundsuits, which began when Cave collected fallen twigs from the park and made them into a sculptural costume, remind us of the potential in the ordinary objects around us and in the urge for self-expression. Cave’s desire and ability to bring communities together to create, express and enjoy represents the spirit of UNT’s Institute for the Advancement of the Arts,” said Tracee Robertson, UNT Art Galleries Director.

 

Cave, who studied at UNT in the 1980s, has been commissioned by the UNT Art Galleries and the institute to create a new performance piece that will take place on campus in the spring with collaborative partners from the College of Music, Department of Dance and Theatre and other UNT arts programs. The piece will incorporate 30 newly created Soundsuits in the shapes of horse-like forms that move through campus and evolve into hybrid beings.

 

The lecture is sponsored by the Patsy R. and Raymond D. Nasher Series in Contemporary Sculpture and Criticism, endowed at UNT by Nancy A. Nasher, David H. Haemisegger and grandchildren.

About Nick Cave

Cave has had numerous one-person exhibitions, including a large traveling exhibition, Nick Cave: Meet Me at the Center of the Earth, organized by the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco in 2009, opening at the Taubman Museum of art in Roanoke, Virginia in September, and featured at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Arizona, the Fowler Museum at the University of California, Los Angeles, the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, Fla., and at the Seattle Art Museum. Cave received the prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation Award in 2008, the Artadia Award, the United States Artist Award and the Joyce Foundation Joyce Award in 2006, Creative Capital Grants in 2004 and 2002, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award in 2001. His work is in many public art collections, including the Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York, Birmingham Museum of Art in Alabama, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Portland Art Museum in Oregon, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, N.Y., among others. Cave is represented by Jack Shainman Gallery in New York and will have his third solo exhibition there in September 2011.

 

Cave earned a bachelor of fine arts degree from the Kansas City Art Institute in 1981 and a master of fine arts degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., in 1988, after beginning graduate studies in 1984 at UNT, where he worked with professors Vincent Falsetta in painting and Shigeko Spear in fibers. Cave also was trained as a dancer by the renowned Alvin Ailey Dance Theater.

 

Launched in October 2009, the UNT Institute for the Advancement of the Arts (IAA) aims to showcase, support and advance excellence in the visual, performing and creative literary arts at UNT, among its faculty members and in conjunction with their renowned colleagues and collaborators.

 

The three central components of the Institute are UNT on the Square, the IAA Faculty Fellows program and the IAA Artist-in-Residence program. Previous artists-in-residence are filmmaker Guillermo Arriaga (2009-2010) and composer Jake Heggie (2010-2011).

 

The IAA is an initiative of the offices of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and the Vice President for Research and Economic Development. Participating colleges include the College of Arts and Sciences, College of Visual Arts and Design and College of Music.

 

Part of the UNT College of Visual Arts and Design, the UNT Art Galleries support the educational mission of the university, enrich the aesthetic environment of the community and serve as a cultural resource for the public at large. Through their focus on curatorial projects involving vanguard contemporary art, the galleries challenge and promote the current discourse surrounding living artists and their works.

About the Nasher Sculpture Center;
Open since October 2003, the Nasher Sculpture Center is dedicated to the display and study of modern and contemporary sculpture.  The Center is located on a 2.4-acre site in the heart of the Dallas Arts District.  Renzo Piano, a world-renowned architect and winner of the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 1998, is the architect of the Center’s 55,000-square-foot building.  Piano worked in collaboration with landscape architect Peter Walker on the design of the two-acre sculpture garden.

The Nasher Sculpture Center was the longtime dream of the late Raymond and Patsy Nasher, who together formed one of the finest collections of modern and contemporary sculpture in the world. The Raymond and Patsy Nasher Collection includes masterpieces by Calder, De Kooning, Di Suvero, Giacometti, Hepworth, Kelly, Matisse, Miró, Moore, Picasso, Rodin, and Serra, among others, and continues to grow and evolve.

The Nasher Sculpture Center presents rotating exhibitions of works from the Nasher Collection as well as special exhibitions drawn from other museums and private collections.  In addition to 10,000 sqaure feet of indoor gallery space, the Center contains an auditorium, education and research facilities, a cafe, and a store.  

 
The Nasher Sculpture Center is open Tuesday through Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm and until 11 pm for special events.  General Admission to the Center is $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, $5 for students, and free for members and children 12 and under.  For more information, visit www.NasherSculptureCenter.org.

 

For more information and photos, please contact:

 

CONTACT:

Kristen Gibbins

Director of Media Relations

(o) 214.242.5177

(c) 972-514-2099

 

UNT News Service Phone Number: (940) 565-2108

Contact: Ellen Rossetti (940) 369-7912