Montclair Art Museum Unveils Major Art Commission

MONTCLAIR, N.J. - April 7, 2014 - PRLog -- The Montclair Art Museum (MAM) has commissioned internationally renowned artist Spencer Finch to create a site-specific installation to mark the Museum’s Centennial. The work for MAM, titled Yellow, consists of four large-scale compositions, printed on transparencies and displayed on light boxes mounted in four ground-floor windows on the Museum’s façade. It was unveiled at MAM’s Centennial Birthday Party, held at the Museum on the evening of January 15.

         The Brooklyn-based Finch is known for his explorations of color and light. His numerous public art projects include The River that Flows Both Ways (2009) for New York’s High Line, consisting of panes of colored glass inspired by the tidal changes of the Hudson River, and the colored glass façade for the Johns Hopkins University Hospital (2012). Celebrated for his indoor works made with industrial light boxes, Finch, with Yellow, has for the first time created an outdoor work using this technology and materials. Each of the four compositions, which seen up close resembles abstract painting (and references the Museum’s collection), consists of red, green, and blue graphic elements that, when seen from a distance, blend to create the optical illusion of yellow light. Finch stated, “I am interested in the paradox of perception, where something both is and is not what it looks like.” Yellow emits a gentle glow-like incandescent light that celebrates MAM’s intimate character, calling to mind a candlelit domestic space and animating the building’s façade. “Yellow light is very close to candlelight,” said Finch. “I was thinking about this very neoclassical façade, and about how to make it appear maybe less imposing and more inviting. I like the idea of it bringing people in; from a distance it’s one thing, then up close you see another thing.”

         MAM’s curator of contemporary art, Alexandra Schwartz, approached Finch about commissioning him for a work because of his interest in 19th-century architecture and in American painting, both strengths of the Museum. Yellow pays tribute to MAM’s neoclassical architecture and roots in the early 20th century; it also salutes the Museum’s historical collection, particularly its first-rate holdings of the Hudson River School painters, who were fascinated with light. Schwartz commented, “Spencer immediately understood our desire for this commission to, quite literally, bring contemporary art to the forefront of our program with an installation for our façade.” As MAM Director Lora Urbanelli said, the work, “while celebrating MAM’s first century, points the way toward its second, which has been a theme of our Centennial Year: we honor the past as we prepare for the future.”

         Yellow is part of MAM’s New Directions series, the centerpiece of the Museum’s contemporary art program. New Directions was founded in 2011 to engage the community with new work that is at once accessible and thought provoking. The next exhibition in MAM’s contemporary program will be Come as You Are: Art of the 1990s, a major survey on view at MAM from February 8 through May 17, 2015, and subsequently touring nationally.

Related Program

MSU/MAM Art Talks

Spencer Finch

Thursday, April 10, 7 p.m.

$12 members, $15 nonmembers

FREE for MSU staff and students

Spencer Finch will discuss how he uses color and light as primary subjects and materials in his works, often employing a colorimeter, a device that measures the average color and temperature of light that exists naturally in a specific place and time.

The MSU/MAM Art Talks series is a collaboration between the Master of Fine Arts degree program of Montclair State University and the Montclair Art Museum.