Howard Oransky – författare

Born to a prominent family in Havana but exiled to the United States as a girl, Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) is regarded as one of the most significant artists of the postwar era. During her too-brief career, she produced a distinctive body of work that includes drawings, installations, performances, photographs, and sculptures. Less well known is her remarkable and prolific production of films. This richly illustrated catalogue presents a series of sequential color stills from each of twenty-one original Super 8 films that have been newly preserved and digitized in high definition for the 2015 exhibition, combined with related photographs, and reference still images from all of the artist's 104 filmworks; together these illustrations sample the full range of the artist's film practice from 1971 to 1981. The book includes Mendieta's first published comprehensive filmography resulting from three years of collaborative research conducted by the Estate of Ana Mendieta Collection and the University of Minnesota as well as original essays by John Perreault, Michael Rush, Rachel Weiss, Lynn Lukkas, Raquel Cecilia Mendieta, and Laura Wertheim Joseph.The first book-length treatment of Mendieta's moving-image practice, Covered in Time and History aims to locate her films centrally within her larger oeuvre and at the forefront of the multidisciplinary shifts that characterized visual arts practice during the 1970s. Published in association with the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota. Exhibition dates: University of California, Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA): November 9, 2016-February 12, 2017 NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdate: February 28-July 3, 2016 Katherine E. Nash Gallery, University of Minnesota: September 15-December 12, 2015

A vivid and moving celebration of the ways that Black Americans have shaped and been shaped by photography, from its inception to the present day.  A Picture Gallery of the Soul presents the work of more than one hundred Black American artists whose practice incorporates the photographic medium. Organized by the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota, this group exhibition samples a range of photographic expressions produced over three centuries, from traditional photography to mixed media and conceptual art.  From the daguerreotypes made by Jules Lion in New Orleans in 1840 to the Instagram post of the Baltimore Uprising made by Devin Allen in 2015, photography has chronicled Black American life, and Black Americans have defined the possibilities of photography. Frederick Douglass recognized the quick, easy, and inexpensive reproducibility of photography and developed a theoretical framework for understanding its impact on public discourse, which he delivered as a series of four lectures during the Civil War. It has been widely acknowledged that Douglass, the subject of 160 photographic portraits and the most photographed American of the nineteenth century, anticipated that the history of American photography and the history of Black American culture and politics would be deeply intertwined. A Picture Gallery of the Soul honors the diverse visions of Blackness made manifest through the lens of photography.  Published in association with the Katherine E. Nash Gallery.  Exhibition dates:Katherine E. Nash Gallery: September 13–December 10, 2022.

A beautifully illustrated review of the deeply connected lives and careers of this prominent Minneapolis African American artist-coupleClarence Morgan and Arlene Burke-Morgan are the epitome of an artist-couple: in love with each other and their family, in love with their art, and devoted to faith, values, and culture that encouraged their artistic development, leading to national and international acclaim and recognition. Originally from Philadelphia, the couple lived and worked side by side throughout their long careers, contributing significantly to each other and to the art communities of the Twin Cities, the University of Minnesota, and beyond.For thirty years, Clarence Morgan was a member of the art department at the university; his art, directed toward abstraction, focused on painting, drawing, and printmaking. Arlene Burke-Morgan also taught at the university, and, after early work with textiles, eventually evolved to an approach of abstraction, especially working with clay, drawing, and installations.The catalog for an exhibition at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery at the University of Minnesota in 2023, A Tender Spirit, A Vital Form is prolifically illustrated with reproductions of works by the artists and features essays on their personal histories and artistic practices.Contributors: Robert Cozzolino, Minneapolis Institute of Art; Tia-Simone Gardner, Macalester College; Bill Gaskins, Maryland Institute College of Art; Nyeema Morgan, interdisciplinary artist.

A beautiful collection of the art and life stories of regional Native painters   Dreaming Our Futures features twenty-eight Native painters, primarily Dakota and Ojibwe, who live in the Midwest or have family or tribal connections here. The artists represent a range of generations, professional experience, and genres-including traditional, historical, contemporary, and conceptual themes. The volume presents full-color reproductions of art by each painter, along with bilingual artist statements, biographies, and essays on the representation of Indigenous people in historical context; storytelling and the creative process; and scholarship on several specific artists.   The renowned Grand Portage Ojibwe artist George Morrison declared, “I have never tried to prove that I was Indian through my art. Yet, there may remain deeply hidden some remote suggestion of the rock whence I was hewn, the preoccupation of the textural surface, the mystery of the structural and organic element, the enigma of the horizon, or the color of the wind.” The variety of images painted by this gathering of artists demonstrates that the strong heritage and powerful traditions of Indigenous painting remain vital and dynamic today.   Dreaming Our Futures accompanies an exhibition at the Katherine E. Nash Gallery in 2024, produced in association with the George Morrison Center for Indigenous Arts at the University of Minnesota.   Artists: Frank Big Bear, David Bradley, Awanigiizhik Bruce, Andrea Carlson, Avis Charley, Fern Cloud, Michelle DeFoe, Jim Denomie, Patrick DesJarlait, Sam English, Carl Gawboy, Joe Geshick, Sylvia Houle, Oscar Howe, George Morrison, Steven Premo, Rabbett Before Horses Strickland, Cole Redhorse Taylor, Roy Thomas, Jonathan Thunder, Thomasina Topbear, Moira Villiard, Kathleen Wall, Star WallowingBull, Dyani White Hawk, Bobby Dues Wilson, Wanbli Mayasleca/Francis J. Yellow, Leah H. Yellowbird, Holly Young.   Contributors: Patricia Marroquin Norby, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Christopher Pexa, U of Minnesota; Mona Susan Power; Diane Wilson.