Storm King Art Center Celebrates 50th Anniversary 6/5

Storm King Art Center, sculpture park, celebrates its fiftieth anniversary with two special exhibitions opening on Saturday, June 5.  5+5: New Perspectives, comprising 12 new and recent works by ten artists, and The View from Here: Storm King at Fifty explores key aspects of Storm King's rich and varied history. Storm King's 2010 season is April 1 through November 14: Wednesday through Sunday, 10:00 am to 5:30 pm (open until 8:00 pm on Saturdays, May 29-September 4; until 5:00 pm daily, November 3-14). For more information visit www.stormkingartcenter.org.

Located in the Hudson River Valley in Mountainville, New York, approximately one hour north of New York City, Storm King encompasses over 500 acres of rolling hills, woodlands, and fields. Selections from its distinguished collection of more than 100 works from the mid-20th century to the present are on permanent view.

Storm King President John P. Stern notes, "Storm King is thrilled to mark its fifteth anniversary with these special exhibitions, one celebrating Storm King's past and the other continuing its tradition of presenting new works. The highly diverse sculptures in 5+5: New Perspectives at once complement and engage with both the collection and one another. They beautifully enrich the enjoyment of the Storm King experience, which is unique with every visit."

On the occasion of its anniversary, Storm King asked ten artists to create a new work or
select a recent one to loan to the sculpture park. Five of the artists are already represented in
Storm King's collection: Alice Aycock, Chakaia Booker, Mark di Suvero, Andy Goldsworthy, and Ursula von Rydingsvard. Five are new to Storm King: John Bisbee, Maria Elena González,
Darrell Petit, Alyson Shotz, and Stephen Talasnik. (Ms. Shotz and Mr. di Suvero have each
loaned two works.)

Storm King Director and Curator David R. Collens worked with the artists to select locations in which to site the sculptures, which will be dispersed throughout Storm King's hills and fields. The sculptures can thus be appreciated for their intrinsic value, as well as in relation to nearby works with which they stand in dialogue, offering new perspectives on Storm King's celebrated collection.

Mr. Collens states, "One of the most exciting aspects of this exhibition is the variety of styles and mediums represented. We are grateful to all of the artists who have created or loaned artworks in honor of Storm King's anniversary."

The sculptures in 5+5: New Perspectives will remain on view for the 2010 season and, in many cases, also through the 2011 season. An updated map will help visitors discover the new works in the exhibition while also identifying those in the Permanent Collection.  The works in 5+5: New Perspectives will be situated as follows.
Museum Patio

On the patio adjacent to the Museum Building, visitors will encounter Alyson Shotz's Viewing Scope (2006), a telescope made of multiple stainless-steel tubes with glass lenses, fastened together and attached to a base that pivots full circle and up and down.  Reminiscent of old-fashioned coin-operated binoculars located at such landmarks as the Empire State Building, Viewing Scope is sited to enable close-up views of scenic vistas in the distance. Yet rather than simply magnifying the observed scene, Viewing Scope, which comprises lenses of differing focal lengths, creates fractured, multiplied, and distorted views, encouraging visitors to perceive their environment-and the very act of seeing-in new ways.

Also on the patio is John Bisbee's Squall (2010), created especially to celebrate Storm King's fiftieth anniversary. The large-scale work comprises 2,000 pounds of 12-inch spikes, welded by the artist into ten 40-inch-wide, hollow, lace-like spheres which, in turn, are stacked to create a symmetrical pyramid. Each sphere (or squall) has an active, swirling surface; together they produce a structure that is at once hulking and of surprising lightness and grace. According to the artist, Squall is intended to mirror Storm King's "shining moments of magic and meaning within the vast beauty of its rolling nature."

Created for the exhibition and its particular site, a major work by Ursula von Rydingsvard represents a new direction in the artist's massive cedar figures, such as Storm King's For Paul (1990-92/2001), located below the terraced lawn on Museum Hill. Ms. von Rydingsvard's towering new work, titled LUBA (2009-2010), is a 17.5-foot-high, vesselshaped object made of cedar planks. A second cedar form appears to grow out of and down from the shoulder of the piece. This, in turn, is supported from below by a cast-bronze element that ends in twisted, leg-like forms that root the piece back into the earth. Or does the cedar form grow from the head of the bronze element?

Mark di Suvero, whose monumental steel works may be viewed from a variety of perspectives across the Storm King landscape, is one of the artists in the exhibition who is most closely associated with the sculpture park. For the anniversary season, Mr. di Suvero selected two works, the smaller of which, al di la (2008), is installed on Museum Hill. A nine-foot-high composition of energetically curving steel- and stainless-steel forms, it is supported by a metal pole welded to a base.

Chakaia Booker, whose work was featured in special exhibitions at Storm King in 2003 and 2004, has created Foci (2010), a 30-foot-high sculpture made of car tires. These have been cut, twisted, and looped to create concentric, bisecting ovals that evoke the movement and abstract shapes of the Storm King landscape, including both natural terrain and human-made fields.

Stephen Talasnik's Stream: A Folded Drawing (2009-2010) was made especially for installation at Storm King. This vast site-specific construction consists of some 3,000 bamboo poles tied together to form a monumental yet intricate structure some 12 feet high by 90 feet long. Roughly kidney-shaped in footprint, it appears to be rolling down the hill on which it is sited. Visitors will be able to walk inside the structure to experience the work, as well as others that are visible through its armature, from a variety of perspectives.

In honor of Storm King's fiftieh anniversary, Alice Aycock chose to recreate Low Building With Dirt Roof (for Mary) (1973/2010), her pivotal ground-hugging "earth house," originally made 37 years ago on a farm in Pennsylvania and re-fabricated for a 1990 exhibition of her work at Storm King. The building has an earth-covered pitched roof that has been seeded with grasses. The roof, which creates an interior height of 30 inches at its peak, is supported by two timber side-walls measuring 12 inches high, 12 inches thick, and 12 feet long; front-and-back fieldstone walls measuring 12 inches high, 2.5 feet thick, and 16 feet long; and interior wood supports. Ms. Aycock has carefully sited the building so that when viewed from slightly below its entrance, the earth-covered roof forms an artificial horizon. Eminent landscape-architect Darrel Morrison worked with Ms. Aycock on this project. Mirror Fence (2003), a large-scale work by Alyson Shotz, is installed adjacent to a dirt road to the southeast of the Calder hillside. It was originally commissioned by Socrates Sculpture Park, in Long Island City, for Yard, an exhibition that examined suburban yards
and what they may signify. For Mirror Fence, Ms. Shotz reimagined the iconic white picket fence, which she viewed as both a symbol of the elusive American Dream and a means of establishing boundaries. It is a 130-foot-long picket fence with a reflective surface that refracts and distorts reality and seems to appear and disappear into the landscape, depending on the angle from which it is viewed.

Darrell Petit's monumental Kiss (2008) consists of two massive granite elements, one weighing 25 tons and measuring 17 feet high, the other weighing 19 tons and standing 15 feet high. Sited adjacent to each other, they touch at the top, creating an intense physical energy and a tension between autonomy and cohesion. Kiss is the most recent and largest of the artist's "interdependent series," created in quarries around the world, including, in this instance, the historic Stony Creek Quarry, in Connecticut.

In 1997-98, commissioned to create a work at Storm King, Andy Goldsworthy worked with wallers from his native UK to fashion the evocative Storm King Wall, which meanders in a serpentine fashion around trees and rocks, entering a pond and emerging at the other side, and continuing to the edge of the western border of the property. This spring, Mr. Goldsworthy created 5 Men, 17 days, 15 boulders, 1 Wall (2010) for Storm King's fiftiehanniversary season. Working once again with British wallers, Mr. Goldsworthy altered a 309- foot dilapidated wall on the Storm King grounds, using 250 tons of stones found on the property to build up a major span of the wall, while allowing the ends to taper off gently, evoking an ancient ruin. The wall winds around boulders along a grove of trees in the landscape.

A major work selected by Mark di Suvero is also installed in the South Fields, on the north side of a pond. Titled Old Grey Beam (2007/2010), this monumental steel sculpture is on public view for the first time. A central 54-foot-long I-beam soars from an A-frame section, forming a tripod of subtle grace and verve. The work appears markedly different depending upon the angle from which it is viewed, and provides a lively visual dialogue with four nearby works by the artist. An interactive conceptual work by Maria Elena González, made especially for this exhibition, requires the active involvement of the viewer for its completion. To create the multi-part work, called You & Me (2010), Ms. González has fabricated 16 platforms-15 of them in the form of painted-steel discs, and one made of two fused, painted I-beams-and installed them across the landscape in strategically sited pairs. Visitors are encouraged to collaborate with one another by standing on paired platforms. Thus positioned, each participant will appear to the person on the other half of the pair to be on or in a nearby work of art.

Inside the Museum Building, The View from Here: Storm King at Fifty explores Storm King's history, including the development of its collection and the creation of its carefully cultivated landscape. Storm King's wealth of archival documents and photographs, the exhibition will evolve and change over the course of two seasons, as new materials are added in place of others and the artists whose works are highlighted change. These documentary materials, along with videos and digital content produced for the exhibition, offer a compelling narrative of Storm King's first 50 years, illuminating its unique place in the contemporary art world and looking toward its future. The exhibition opens on the first floor, with a gallery devoted to topics including the early years of the Storm King collection and the siting of individual works, the acquisition and development of the property, the creation of temporary exhibitions in the Museum Building, and the relationship of Storm King to cultural institutions in New York City and elsewhere in the Hudson Valley. Moving images and text projected onto a topographical map, located in Gallery 1, provide an overview of such salient elements of Storm King as the development of the manmade areas of landscape, the growth of the sculpture collection, and other key topics.

Another gallery on the first floor, focusing on Claes Oldenburg's Wayside Drainpipe (1979), provides an example of Storm King's enduring relationships with individual artists. Included here are a maquette, drawings, and fabrication sketches for the work, which was installed at Storm King by the artist in October 2009, thanks to a long-term loan from a private collector.

The second-floor galleries open with installations focusing on two of the artists most closely associated with Storm King. One gallery is devoted to Alexander Calder-whose monumental Arch is an iconic Storm King work-and the history of his large-scale outdoor sculpture. Maquettes for outdoor works that may be seen from the gallery windows are accompanied here by an overview of the artist's major outdoor pieces, both those that have been a part of Storm King's landscape since 1973 and those made by the artist for urban spaces.

Another gallery looks at the inspirational role of David Smith's sculpture in the evolution of the Storm King collection. This room contains an ongoing installation of work by Smith, including Tanktotem VII, of 1960; The Iron Woman, dating from 1954-58; and Five Units Equal, of 1956.

The View from Here also explores the ongoing and complex task of conserving sculptures that are sited in the outdoors. Such topics as the occasional need to re-fabricate works, undertaken in consultation with artists, and the effects of weather on materials like steel, aluminum, stone, and wood are examined. Works by Alexander Liberman and Louise Bourgeois provide case studies of these multifaceted issues, taking viewers through the conservation process.

The final galleries of the exhibition explore issues of land reclamation and preservation, viewshed protection, and the installation of artworks at Storm King through its history. Archival videos shown in a small gallery provide an unusual and fascinating behindthe-scenes look at the latter.

Special fiftieh-anniversary programming includes discussions by artists of their works featured in 5+5: New Perspectives, daily screenings of films about Storm King, a series of classical concerts celebrating 50 years of music at Storm King, and an autumn "sculptors' weekend" and public celebration.

Storm King's Permanent Collection of sculpture, dating from post World War II to the present, includes works by many of the 20th and 21st centuries' most influential artists, integrated into the sculpture park's carefully maintained landscape. Included are numerous site-specific works that have been commissioned by Storm King over the years. The collection is regularly complemented by temporary installations and exhibitions, both outdoors and in the Museum Building, and by a rich roster of public and education programs, including guided walks through the landscape and art, docent-led tours of the collection, lectures, and concerts, among others.

Storm King's 2010 season is April 1 through November 14: Wednesday through
Sunday, 10:00 am to 5:30 pm (open until 8:00 pm on Saturdays, May 29-September 4; until
5:00 pm daily, November 3-14). Storm King is closed Mondays and Tuesdays, except for the
Monday holidays marking Memorial Day (May 31), Independence Day (July 5), Labor Day
(September 6), and Columbus Day (October 11). Picnicking is permitted in designated areas.
Public transportation is provided by Coach USA from Port Authority Bus Terminal. For more
information visit www.stormkingartcenter.org.

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