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On October 5, The Netherland's Van Abbemuseum, in conjunction with Chicago's Smart Museum of Art, opens "Heart Land," an art exhibit and music festival dedicated to Middle America, with St. Louis' own Juan William Chavez, proprietor of Boots Contemporary Art Space, as one of the featured artists. If you've followed this arts blog during its short life, you've read more than one screed, penned by yours truly, about the undervaluation of Midwest art and music, both by folks on the coasts as well as Middle Americans themselves. When Juan sent me this link, I could hardly believe it - after two crabby posts in less than a month about Midwestern artists getting the short shrift, here's a whole European festival dedicated to the topography and culture of the Midwest! (Some mornings, the feeling that you're not crazy is better than winning a $50 scratch-off.) The show will travel to the Smart in the fall of 2009, and even if I have to pack a suitcase full of Ritz Crackers and travel by MegaBus, I will not miss it.
Here's a thumbnail description from the site:
"Heartland is an interdisciplinary project which reflects on the visual culture, art and music of the heart of the United States. The Heartland project consists of a group exhibition in the Van Abbemuseum together with a musical programme in the Muziekcentrum. It will also include ancillary events, such as debates, lectures, a photo exhibition, publications, and an artists in residence programme."
And this excerpt has me nodding like a bobblehead:
"While not an official region, what Mark Twain once called the ‘body of the nation’ encompasses for us the area roughly in the middle of the United States, linked by the symbolic Mississippi River. Ranging from New Orleans in the south, up to Minneapolis in the West and Detroit in the East, this cultural melting pot has brewed much of the country’s social, religious and racial activism. The presence of the Mississippi River has dominated its history being the carrier of different moments of migration, industrialization and struggle. Many of the vital organs of the country’s artistic and musical expression are embedded in this middle ground between the West and East coasts and yet this zone is obscured on the global cultural and economic map. As a result of this underexposure, the prevailing stereotypes of rustic, small-town backwardness remain entrenched in outsider imaginings of Mississippi Basin life and culture ... With the current US presidential elections, it becomes even more important to look into this specific area, beyond the clichés dominating much coverage of the elections. Impressions of this powerful nation’s voting behaviour received by European audiences are mostly mediated by the East Coast of the United States."
Stacey Earle (Steve's little sister) is on the docket. So is the crew of the Little Miss Rockaway Armada, who last year ended their journey up the Miss here in St. Louis, right across from Cassilly's Cement Land. Also Detroit's Tree of Heaven Woodshop - a collaborative art project based on using the pernicious Ailanthus altissima, otherwise known as the "ghetto palm," as a source of very renewable wood. (Which may be the most brilliant idea I've heard all year.)
In addition to Juan (who'll be showing a Chicago-themed suite of drawings titled "Drawing on LSD," meaning Lake Shore Drive, not lysergic acid) other artists include sculptor Theaster Gates (who'll be playing music with his Black Monks of the Mississippi); Kansas City's Cody Critcheloe, lead singer of the band SSION ("pronounced 'shun' as in passion, confusion, illusion") the author of wild, wonderful little videos and drawings; Chicago's Kerry James Marshall, who will show work from his ongoing "Rhythm Mastr" project; and KC's Jamie Warren, who you may remember from her solo photography show, "Don't You Feel Better," exhibited last year at White Flag Projects.
The Van Abbemuseum also dispatched a crew of European artists who traveled the Midwest to destroy their preconceptions about this part of the world, both good and bad; they posted their findings - and their photos - on a really lovely little blog, "Heartland Research." They had some nice things to say about STL, as well as other cities that tend to get more than their fair share of doom and gloom reportage from mainstream sources, including Detroit and New Orleans. Like St. Louisans, folks in these cities know that even when the national headlines report that we're fat, flooded, crime-ridden, foreclosed upon or just drained of residents, life goes on. And often in some very surpising, and inspiring, ways.—Stefene Russell
"Nathaniel Mayer at the Bohemian National Home. A great musician and a great new space for art and music off the radar," Detroit; Photo by Dave Kreiger. Courtesy of Model D.
