Liv Schulman: The Gobernment / Claudia Wieser: Generations

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts is pleased to present two new exhibitions that update modernism’s legacies, Liv Schulman: The Gobernment and Claudia Wieser: Generations, on view through June 13, 2020.

Liv Schulman: The Gobernment
Liv Schulman: The Gobernment (2019) is a multi-episode video installation that imagines the destiny and work of unconventional and often forgotten women artists who lived in Paris between 1910 and 1980. Neither a realistic film nor a period fiction or a rational history, The Gobernment is a fictional historical revision that turns words, speech, and images into fluid characters freed from the dominant phallocratic discourse. Liv Schulman: The Gobernment is curated by Sylvie Fortin, Bemis Curator-in-Residence.

Claudia Wieser: Generations
Referencing the history of space and form through architecture, design, and imagery, Wieser considers the coexistence of abstraction and the physiological experience through her spatial installations. With a nod to Modernist geometric constructions through Bauhaus inspiration and influenced by spirituality within an artistic practice like artists Hilma af Klint, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee, Generations will encompass her distinctive multi-faceted practice. A publication for Generations is forthcoming. Claudia Wieser: Generations is co-curated by Rachel Adams, Bemis Chief Curator and Director of Programs and Jennifer Carty, Smart Museum of Art Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art.  

In a concerted effort to help slow the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), Bemis Center has temporarily closed its galleries and has postponed upcoming public programs beginning Friday, March 13. New dates for upcoming programs will be determined and announced as soon as possible via email, on Bemis Center’s website, and via social media on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. 

A series of free public programs will take place at Bemis throughout the duration of the exhibitions. “Refocusing History: A Lecture Series” aims to highlight 20th-century artists and practitioners, including many women, whose exemplary lives and important contributions have been marginalized. Mark Hinchman, Professor of Interior Design at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln College of Architecture, will lecture on “Women of the Bauhaus” on April 16 and Dr. Jasmina Tumbas, Assistant Professor, Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Buffalo, will present “The Cruelty Of Citizenship: Resistance in the Realm Of Alternatives” on May 14. Adams and Fortin will each give a curator-led exhibition tour on April 2 and May 28, respectively. Additional programs to be announced.

Liv Schulman: The Gobernment and Claudia Wieser: Generations are on view at Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts through June 13, 2020.

Admission: Free

Liv Schulman: The Gobernment is sponsored, in part, by Douglas County, Nebraska; Nebraska Arts Council and Nebraska Cultural Endowment; Omaha Steaks; and Streck. It was conceived with the support of an ADAGP-Villa Vassilieff grant, in partnership with Bibliothèque Kandinsky, MNAM-CCI, Centre Pompidou. The Curator-in-Residence program is supported, in part, by Esther and Dan Brabec and Carol Gendler. Claudia Wieser: Generations is sponsored, in part, by Douglas County, Nebraska; The Goethe-Institut; Nebraska Arts Council and Nebraska Cultural Endowment; Omaha Steaks; and Streck. Claudia Wieser: Generations is organized by Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago.

Claudia Wieser: Generations is on view at the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago September 22–December 13, 2020.