Museum of Art

Molar Chair

Wendell Castle

Molar chair, I consider to be one of the great jewels in the Museum’s collection. The design of the piece evokes memories of two very special people in my life - my grandparents - and reconnects me with some my best childhood memories.
After WWII, my grandfather, a WWII Navy veteran, dabbled in handcrafted tables, mosaics and woodcarving. During the same period of time, artists of the American Studio Crafts movement were similarly rejecting mass-production and embracing historic craft methods. These artists experimented with non-traditional materials and new techniques, producing bold, abstract, and sculptural art, as well as continuing to make utilitarian objects. Wendell Castle, one of the movement’s founders, challenged traditional boundaries in furniture making. A skilled craftsmen, Castle created unique pieces by merging sculpture and design.  Sara Claflin, Education & Communications Manager, Museum of Art

Home Savings In America

Kenji Nakahashi

The term tombstone in a museum refers to an object’s basic identifying characteristics using the classic order: artist’s name, object title, date, media, dimensions. Sometimes registrars find that objects in a permanent collection are missing even these essential facts. This photograph by Kenji Nakahashi is a great example. The Museum of Art has twenty-five photographs by Nakahashi taken in New York City ranging in dates from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s; however, this image does not have a date. Taking clues from the photograph we begin investigating the details. Nakahashi’s title, Home Savings in America, appears to reference the sign above the door “[something] of America.” A few seconds of internet research tells us that Home Savings of America operated a bank branch across from Grand Central Station in the old Bowery Savings Bank Building. From a 1996 New York Landmarks Preservation Commission report we find a matching photo of the building exterior (page 13) and confirmation that the branch was in operation from 1991 to 1995. This aligns with the artist’s range of dates and location and allows us to confidently pinpoint the date sometime between 1991-1995.
Laura Calhoun, Exhibitions and Collections Manager, Museum of Art

Kenji Nakahashi

Parade (Mets)

Looking through Kenji Nakahashi’s photographs, this one particularly caught my eye. The people in this photo are unrecognizable, but I immediately recognized the city as none other than New York. The peoples’ silhouettes are contrasted against tall skyscrapers and a bright clear blue sky. Looking at this photograph gives me the feeling of celebration and triumph, the polar opposite of how the nation currently feels. As a graduating senior, I am unable to celebrate in the way I always imagined these past four years. As a New Yorker, my heart hurts for the city once so lively that is now in disarray. The individuals in Nakahashi’s work, likely strangers, are all celebrating a common victory – the Met’s 1986 World Series win. (Something they haven’t seen since.) I imagine once this is behind us and people can take to the streets again, that New York will look similar to how Nakahashi captured it in 1986 – full of strangers celebrating a common victory.
Michaela McBride, Museum of Art Gallery Attendant 2017-2020, Master of Science Occupational Therapy ‘21

Nicole Eisenman
Sloppy Bar Room Kiss

As a figurative painter myself, I am captivated by Eisenman’s expressionistic portraits. The Museum’s lithograph, Sloppy Bar Room Kiss, captures many qualities that make me so fond of figurative work. I love the gestures of the figures. The way their slumping, curved bodies contrast the stiffness of the chair emphasizes their collapsed embrace. Their heads not only have visual symmetry, but melt together becoming more connected to each other than they are to their own bodies. And that hanging arm! The proportions are completely wrong, but I believe it and I can feel the gesture in my own body. There is a quietness to this private moment that is taking place in a public space. There are so many lovely things about the way Eisenman chose to portray these figures that make it one of my favorite pieces in the museum’s collection. 
Allison Hoey, Museum Fellow 2018-2020, BFA and Art History '20

Alexis Paul Arapoff

Chemistry Building - Harvard College

The vibrant colors Alexis Paul Arapoff chose to use in Chemistry Building – Harvard College led me to pause and admire this piece. The scattered school buildings around which students converse, cycle, and walk makes me reminisce of my days at UNH. The wide sidewalks are inviting, although quiet. Perhaps classes are currently being held or students are off campus on a seasonal break. The blue sky, yellow leaves, and bare tree branches, that Arapoff has painted so vividly, bring me back to crisp autumn days walking to classes. The brick buildings too are reminiscent of the architectural history of New England colleges and universities.

I enjoy the fond memories of the beauty of the UNH campus this painting evokes.  
Anna Stockman, Museum of Art Gallery Attendant 2017-2020, Community & Environmental Planning '20

Andy Warhol

Dog

There is something about miniature dachshunds that make me want to cry.  I love them so much.  Their wrinkly little legs are hardly long enough to keep equally stocky bodies from dragging on the floor. ­­Equally as cute is their calm demeanor and propensity to fit anywhere you place them.  They encompass everything that is good in the world, and it is in this piece by Andy Warhol entitled Dog­ that reminds me of everything that I love about miniature dachshunds. Here, we see a small four by three Polaroid from 1976 in which Warhol places the small brown dog, almost posed in profile against a light yellow/pink cloth, in contrast with human hands that hold the back end of the dog down. In the corner of the Polaroid is a small corner of red fabric that peaks into the frame, accentuating the dog’s glossy coat.

Last fall, this was one of the many pieces I had the pleasure of installing for the Museum’s exhibition Andy Warhol: #NOFILTER. Since then it has been one of my very favorite pieces in our permanent collection.
Joey Furlone, Museum Fellow 2019-20, Studio Art & Art Education ‘21

Mark Baum

Garden of Life

Mark Baum’s Garden of Life tickles my occultist tendencies. The central composition: an organically growing Tree of Life ascending to a starry sky while flanked by two trees, each the other’s opposite, would look natural on a tarot card or a masonic apron. Baum, however, is working out a personal language of symbols; he is getting close to some spiritual understanding and creating a personal expression of it.    

Garden of Life was painted during Baum’s transitional period (where his work was moving from representational to non-objective) and it contains many of the signatures of work during this period: the feeling of ascending, open portals, the two-dimensionality and the repetition of similar images.  

What moves me most about this piece is the radiance and the joyful movement. The organic shapes break out into tiny arms reaching up, moving from dark to light toward the open gate and the vast blue sky beyond.  
Kathy McKenna, Administrative Assistant, Museum of Art

Jo Sandman

Light Memory

Jo Sandman’s x-ray image of a human in profile eliminates clothing, hair, and soft tissue to reveal the complex structure of the body: vertebrae and bones, joints, teeth, and esophagas. With the layers of a public persona and personality, so carefully constructed and worn, now removed we are left to examine a person—any person, us.

Sandman’s earlier photographic work, Transmissions, consisted of composite images in which she layered two photographs to create imagined portraits. In some instances, she used photographs of inanimate objects overlapping them with abstracted human faces either “found” in nature or manipulated from x-ray film. The layered portraits intended to convey the intricate individualism of a person—personality, creativity and intellect, and finally their spirit.

In this print from the Light Memory series, Sandman gets down to the essence of what it means to be human. Stripped of outward attributes we are all the same: raw, fragile, impermanent.
Kristina Durocher, Art Museum Director