Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis Welcomes New Executive Director Lisa Melandri, Hosts Fall Exhibition Season Preview

The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) celebrated the opening of its Fall 2012 season on Friday, September 7. More than 1,000 patrons filled the museum at a Members’ Preview that evening to meet new Executive Director Lisa Melandri and see exhibitions by internationally celebrated artists Leslie Hewitt and Rosa Barba. In addition, CAM’s lobby has been transformed into an interactive space to experience the Presidential election process with Jonathan Horowitz’s Your Land/My Land: Election ’12.

In tandem with its Fall programs, CAM also announced new hours, designed to provide St. Louis’s contemporary art-viewing public with easier access to its programs and exhibitions and to further engage the Grand Center district as an expansive nightlife hub, CAM is extending its evening hours on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. The new hours will be: 11:00 am – 6:00 pm Wednesday, 11:00 am – 9:00 pm Thursday and Friday, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm Saturday and Sunday. The Museum will be closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

In tandem with its Fall programs, CAM will inaugurate a new museum shop initiative, CAM POP, which invites artists, artisans and creative entrepreneurs to briefly reimagine its retail space for the duration of each seasonal exhibition series. The debut shop will be one: Contemporary Design, featuring an array of products by Gina Alvarez, Paper Boat Studios, Sprouted Designs, and Perennial, among many other local and national artists.

Lisa Melandri joined the museum as executive director in August. Previously, she served in a managerial and curatorial capacity at the Santa Monica Museum of Art where she was named Deputy Director for Exhibitions and Programs. During her tenure, the Santa Monica Museum of Art grew significantly in scope and size, nearly doubling its staff and operating budget, and has garnered national and international recognition, respect, and critical acclaim.

Fall Exhibitions

Leslie Hewitt: Sudden Glare of the Sun

Leslie Hewitt has received international recognition for sculptural photographs that reestablish our connection to photography as a physical, lived experience. Hewitt’s exhibition at CAM will be the largest and most expansive presentation of her photographic work in an American museum to date, featuring two recent series — A Series of Projections (2010) and Blue Skies, Warm Sunlight (2011) — together and in their entirety for the first time.

Rosa Barba: Desert – Performed

Rosa Barba’s installations and sculptures use the basic elements of film — celluloid, projection, light, and sound — to create historical narratives and examinations of geographical locations that heighten our awareness of film’s material properties. Desert – Performed will be her first solo exhibition in an American museum, marking the U.S. debut of a series of works focusing on California’s Mojave Desert. The central work in the exhibition is The Long Road (2010), a 35mm film shot at an abandoned racetrack in the Mojave Desert. The work contemplates the passage of time as the track is gradually absorbed back into its dusty environment. The circular, enigmatic narrative in I Made a Circuit, Then a Second Circuit (2010), a work closely related to The Long Road, is presented on a tapestry-like piece of felt from which Barba has cut the letters of a text. Like a modern-day illuminated manuscript, the prose only becomes legible when a spotlight shines through the letter-shaped gaps. Other works in the exhibition present the desert as a site of excavation and discovery. Barba’s works are in constant motion, their gestures occurring in the gallery in real time.

Jonathan Horowitz: My Land/Your Land: Election ‘12

In anticipation of the forthcoming Presidential election, CAM joins five other institutions in the United States in presenting Jonathan Horowitz’s My Land/Your Land: Election ’12. This multipart installation splits the Museum’s lobby into blue and red halves; continuously showing CNN’s and Fox News’s coverage of the elections on separate, opposing monitors; and, upon conclusion of the election, placing either Mitt Romney’s or Barack Obama’s portrait on the wall to signify being elected President of the United States. The installation extends Horowitz’s ongoing exploration of how mass media and popular culture increasingly determine our experience of everyday life.

The Front Room

Running parallel to the Main Galleries, the Front Room will feature short exhibitions of new work by Lauren Adams, Anthony Pearson, and Sreshta Rit Premnath. The Front Room operates at a different rhythm, featuring films, performance, panting, sculpture, sound, photography, and new installations, each lasting a few weeks at a time.

The initial exhibition by Lauren Adams, running through October 14, mines the histories of early exploration, colonialism, and industrialization to make new and surprising connections that resonate with current sociopolitical issues. Working in a variety of media — from paintings and drawings to textiles and printmaking — Adams calls explores the relationship between power, labor, and material culture. Inspired by historical decorative forms and designs such as Chinoiserie-style wallpaper, Elizabethan-era dress, pirate flags, and Soviet avant-garde agitprop from the early twentieth century, Adams’s hybrid objects and installations are purposely anachronistic and deeply relevant in regard to how we value labor and its attendant outcomes today.

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis

The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) presents, supports, and celebrates the art of our time. It is the premier museum in St. Louis dedicated to contemporary art. Focused on a dynamic array of changing exhibitions, CAM provides a thought-provoking program that reflects and contributes to the global cultural landscape. Through the diverse perspectives offered in its exhibitions, public programs, and educational initiatives, CAM actively engages a range of audiences to challenge their perceptions. It is a site for discovery, a gathering place in which to experience and enjoy contemporary visual culture.

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New hours (effective September 7, 2012) Wednesday 11:00 am – 6:00 pm Thursday 11:00 am – 9:00 pm Friday 11:00 am – 9:00 pm Saturday 10:00 am – 5:00 pm Sunday 10:00 am – 5:00 pm