Kresge Art Museum is located on the first floor of the Kresge Art Center at the intersection of Physics & Auditorium Roads on the Michigan State University campus. Museum hours are Monday through Friday, 10 to 5 p.m., Thursday until 8 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m. For additional information, call (517) 353-9834 or visit www.artmuseum.msu.edu

KRESGE ART MUSEUM EVENTS: 09/28/09 through 10/12/09

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Celebrating Korea
Gods, Demons & Generals: Icons of Korean Shamanism
through October 18, 2009
Kresge Art Museum
This exhibition of late 19th-early 20th century paintings of spirits and deities represents and explores the indigenous shamanic tradition, which is a force that exists at the nexus of the culture and religion of Korea. These paintings were not created as art or decoration but rather as visual representations of the gods that a shaman (mudang or mansin) honors each day in her shrine, calls upon to help her give divinations, and manifests in her own person when she performs an elaborate ritual (kut). When they appear in rituals, the gods and ancestors speak through the shaman’s lips and perform through her own body, chastising family members for neglect and misbehavior but also bringing promises of good fortune. The images in the paintings, like the costumes that shamans wear when performing rituals, reveal a lively religious practice that incorporates elements of popular religion, Buddhism, and the old Confucian state, often with a dash of humor. To glimpse the world depicted in these compositions is to gain a unique perspective on Korea’s ancient past and immediate present at once.
This exhibition is organized by and paintings are on loan from The Korea Society, New York.

Haeri Yoo: Paper Deep

Haeri Yoo’s mixed-media site-specific installation, executed on two large gallery walls in the museum in mid-August, examines themes of humor, sexuality, gestural figuration and psychological tension. The formal sensibility of her native Korea translates into sensitivity to negative space and mark-making, producing works that, according to Yoo, are “built up, painted, drawn, pasted and re-shaped from a large repository of smaller explorations”. By adding and mutating reality, her wall drawing fuses beauty and violence.

Chinese & Japanese Scrolls
through October 18, 2009
Kresge Art Museum, Perspectives Gallery
View scrolls from the KAM collection.
Exhibition and programs organized in conjunction with the Asian Studies Program, MSU.

Discoveries: Research, Science and Seeing the Collection
Ongoing through 2009
50th Anniversary On-line Exhibition
This on-line exhibition shows the usually hidden aspects of curatorial work. New insights into works of art in the collection can result from scientific analysis and conservation treatment, careful looking, and art historical research. An object is not always what it seems.
Visit KAM and past exhibitions on-line at www.artmuseum.msu.edu and access the cell phone tour from home.

CURRENT EVENTS & PROGRAMS

Gallery Talk: Haeri Yoo: Paper Deep
Monday, September 28, 2009, noon
Kresge Art Museum
Haeri Yoo, installation artist, will discuss the paintings she executed on two gallery walls in the museum.
Department of Art & Art History Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series: Haeri Yoo
Monday, September 28, 2009, 7 pm
South Kedzie Hall, Room 107

Film: Blood Rain (2005, 119 min.) Korean with English subtitles
Thursday, October 1, 2009, 7 pm
MSU Main Library, W449
Introduction by Mina Shin, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Linguistics and German, Slavic, Asian and African Languages
A murder mystery set in 1808 during the Chosun Dynasty explores shamanism and its rituals, discrimination against Roman Catholicism, and belief in ghosts. A box office smash in Korea!

Gallery Talk: Conservation
Wednesday, October 7, 2009, noon
Kresge Art Museum
Director Susan J. Bandes discusses many facets of museum conservation and highlights from the museum’s related on-line exhibition.

Season premiere: Art 21
Wednesday, October 7, 2009, 7 pm
Kresge Art Center, Room 108
Watch the first episode of the new season of Art 21, the PBS series that visits four artists per episode, offering in-depth interviews with contemporary artists. Join museum curator April Kingsley for a discussion and to view works of art from Art 21 artists that are part of the Kresge collection.

Creative Kids: Doorway to the Blues ages 8-11
Saturday, October 10, 2009, 1-3 pm
With John Scott’s kinetic sculpture as inspiration, create your own with flat shapes and wire incorporating balance, rhythm and movement.
$3 Friends of Kresge Art Museum members; $4 general public. Class size is limited, pre-register and pre-pay required at 353-9835 or email wolfeca1[at]msu.edu.

Gallery Talk: Recent Acquisitions
Monday, October 12, 2009, noon
Kresge Art Museum

FUTURE EVENTS & PROGRAMS
East Lansing Film Society Film: Séraphine (2008)
Wednesday – Thursday, October 14 & 15, 7:30pm
East Lansing Hannah Community Center, 819 Abbot Road, EL
Directed by Martin Provost, 125 minutes, not rated, French with English subtitles.
Séraphine arrives from France as the year's most honored film, winner of seven Césars from the French Academy, including best film and best actress for the remarkable acting by Yolande Moreau as the title character. Séraphine is a frumpy middle-aged cleaning woman who believes she is guided by guardian angels to create her exotic naïve paintings of flowers and plants. She paints in a state of religious ecstasy. She is discovered by the prominent art critic and collector, William Uhde, for whom she cleans house and her paintings become known to the world. David Edelstein, New York Magazine movie critic, says “Séraphine is one of the most evocative films about an artist I’ve ever seen—and in its treatment of madness one of the least condescending.” Visit www.elff.com or call (517) 980-5802 for more information. Sponsor: Kresge Art Museum.

Friends of Kresge Art Museum Annual Meeting
Monday, October 19, 6-8 pm
MSU Federal Credit Union, 3777 West Road, Lansing
Join Friends to hear about the year’s achievements, future plans and elect officers. All are welcome; refreshments served. Nominating committee and slate of officers listed on the KAM website.

All information contained herein provided by MSU's Kresge Art Museum.