Go Figure! The Human Form at RAM

As seen in the Racine Post

Coinciding with the Racine Art Museum’s upcoming career retrospective of American ceramic sculptor Viola Frey, the museum presents Go Figure! The Human Form in RAM’s Collections March 15 through Aug. 2. Using Frey’s interest in the human figure as a starting point, Go Figure! brings together works from RAM’s permanent collection that depict the human form in a variety of styles and media.

Unlike many museums that keep works from their permanent collections on constant display, the Racine Art Museum changes all of its exhibition galleries three times each year.

The museum selects from its holdings of over 4,000 objects to create specific thematic exhibitions. Often, as with Go Figure!, RAM draws on its major exhibitions to suggest topics for permanent collection shows that run simultaneously at the museum.

Though Viola Frey was also a painter and a sculptor, she has been primarily identified as a ceramic artist. With ceramics occupying the largest portion of RAM’s collection, Go Figure! features many ceramic artists with national and international reputations who are known for their accomplishments in clay. The exhibition includes large-scale and small-scale works; pieces that are freestanding and others that hang on the wall. Artists represented include nationally respected ceramic sculptors Michael Lucero, Beverly Mayeri, Judy Moonelis, Richard Shaw and Akio Takamori.

In addition to its ceramics, RAM is also known for its breadth of holdings in other craft media. Selections from its fibers, glass and metals collections will also join those from the ceramics collection in Go Figure! This exhibition demonstrates that the human figure — one of the oldest subjects in the history of art, dating back to cave paintings — is a subject of interest to artists working in most art media today. The show will include works by Judy Mulford and Anne Kingsbury in fibers, David Hopper and Ginny Ruffner in glass and Eleanor Moty and Thomas Mann in metals.

As the inspiration for Go Figure!, the exhibition Bigger, Better, More: The Art of Viola Frey will open at the Racine Art Museum on April 24. Organized by the RAM and the Gardiner Museum, Toronto, this is the first major exhibition of Frey’s work since her death in 2004. On view at RAM through Aug. 16, the show features Frey’s colossal clay figures, as well as a selection of her paintings and ceramic plates. Bigger, Better, More will travel to Toronto in September, and then, to museums nationwide.

Accompanying Bigger, Better, More is a 134-page exhibition catalogue that follows Frey’s career. Author and show’s curator, Davira S. Taragin, formerly RAM’s director of exhibitions and programs, together with Patterson Sims, former director of the Montclair Art Museum, present never-before-published facts and fresh interpretations of both Frey’s life and her art. Susan Jefferies, former curator, Modern and Contemporary Ceramics at the Gardiner Museum, offers a personal recollection of the artist. The book is available from the RAM Museum Store in hardcover or softbound. Copies may be reserved by calling 262.638.8200.

The Racine Art Museum
441 Main Street
Racine, Wisconsin 53403
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