November 18, 2012 – February 17, 2013

January 1 – May 31, 2013

Over the past eight years, the staff of the Meadows Museum of Art and the Friends of the Algur Meadows Museum with assistance from Dr. and Mrs. Michael C. Howard, have augmented the permanent collection through the addition of period Indochinese costumes depicted by Despujols in his artworks. This exhibition of works includes the costumes and textiles of the Lao, Lue, Black Tai, and White Tai peoples of Laos and North Vietnam.

Click here for information about the March 7, 2013 convocation. Students, this event is worth 75 Passport Points.

January 19 – May 31, 2013

As part of the spring schedule, the Meadows Museum of Art at Centenary College of Louisiana opens 2013 with a special exhibition of works on paper by Renaissance artists. Comprised primarily of print works, this exhibition includes eight important woodcuts and engraved prints by Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer. These works, along with a number of others in this exhibition, were loaned to the Meadows Museum of Art from private collections.

Of great interest, the exhibition also includes one of the world’s largest prints, The Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I. This important image is eight by ten feet in size and is composed of more than 150 small prints joined together to create the illusion of a triumphal arch through which royal processions would pass. The Triumphal Arch of Maximilian I was donated to the Meadows Museum of Art by a private collector from Washington, D.C., and is one of few located in the United States.

What was the impetus for the creation of this enormous Renaissance print of an arch? Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I (1459 – 1519) of the Hapsburg dynasty was deeply concerned with the immortalization of his life’s adventures and achievements as a warrior and statesman. Although Maximilian wanted to construct an arch of stone similar to those of the Caesars, he lacked the money to do so.

The woodblock printing process was an inexpensive way to produce multiple copies of images and was then at a technical and aesthetic peak in the hands of northern European artists such as Albrecht Durer. Because of his fascination with printmaking combined with lack of funds, Maximilian engaged Albrecht Durer to create a massive triumphal arch of woodblock images on paper. Dürer designed a portion of the images contained in The Arch along with his assistants Wolf Traut and Hans Springinklee, and the Regensburg artist Albrecht Altdorfer. The iconography of The Arch, however, was dictated to the artists by Maximilian, who conceived of the print as an everlasting memorial to himself. As such, this monumental print functioned as a billboard for Maximilian I and today continues to advertise the emperor’s accomplishments.

February 24 – March 31, 2013

Following graduation from the University of Georgia, Drék Davis worked as a counselor with Educational Talent Search, a Trio Program. In conversations with Trio students, Davis asked if they knew of Emmet Till, the African American boy from Chicago who visited the Mississippi delta for vacation in the summer of 1955 and was brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman. To Davis’s surprise, the students said they knew and had learned about Emmett Till from the words in a contemporary pop song. Struck by the sources from which his students acquired information and how different his students’ process of information gathering was from his own, Davis determined to “bridge the gap between generations and the acquisition of information.”

As a graduate student, Drék Davis drew upon his personal experiences to create artwork that explored the phenomenon and implications of idol worship in contemporary society. These explorations continue to affect his artwork and are manifest in Idle Warship, Davis’s most recent exhibition in which Christian and Yoruba language and images are juxtaposed with those of Pop/Hip Hop culture and western Art History. Of these works, Davis states, “Idle Warship considers the topics of politics, religion, violence, race, representation, and the places where these things intersect. It is the fluidity of history and the pervasiveness of appropriation (a.k.a. sampling) that binds much of this work. And it is the possibility that the ubiquitous hand fan (church or otherwise) will be used as an instrument of education, while aiding in meditation and supplication, which has most intrigued me.”

In his gallery installation, Davis places a mélange of visual imagery within the format of four cathedral windows and a single roundel and positions these to effectuate a chapel. The windows are filled with religious forms and symbols juxtaposed to secular objects and images familiar to viewers of any age. In one cathedral window, a large, threatening hand clasps a pistol, firmly situating an image associated with contemporary violence within the context of a traditional religious setting. In another window, the image of an African American Marilyn Monroe (The Seven Year Itch) smiles at viewers as her skirt billows up. By positioning this figure in a church window, the artist elevates this icon to pseudo-saintly status and makes her worthy of worship. The head of the Statue of Liberty looks out from the roundel with the Arabic word for “head” painted beneath it. Punctuating the space between windows, viewers encounter church fans on which the usual advertisements for funeral parlors and insurance agencies are replaced with language and imagery associated with Christian and Yoruba deities.

The barrage of imagery is not dissimilar to that experienced when surfing the net. But the type of imagery differs from the casual surf since the works in Idle Warship incorporate emotionally charged images likely to eviscerate responses from viewers. Ultimately, the viewer’s perspective on a variety of cultural, political, social, and religious issues will in part govern the response to Idle Warship.

Friends of the Algur Meadows Museum Preview
Saturday, February 23, 5:30–7:30 pm
(5:30 – 6:15 Gallery Talk, 6:15 – 7:30 pm Reception)

April 21 – May 5, 2013

The exhibition Shreveport to Beirut through a Democratic Lens is a documentary photo exhibition that developed out of ten day study-visit to Lebanon by Centenary political science major Jordan Ring. Ring traveled to Lebanon with the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations and the Lebanon Renaissance Foundation to gain a deeper understanding of the region and its politics. In a discussion with a native Lebanese person, Ring remembers being cautioned, “If you understand Lebanon’s history that’s because no one explained it to you.” To make sense of the centuries-long history of the region’s various identities and competing interests is a monumental task. Ring developed the Shreveport to Beirut project to help create meaning of these effects in the present day and purposefully initiate a cross-cultural understanding of what democracy means.

Shreveport to Beirut through a Democratic Lens explores how Lebanese and American students define democracy. To begin the exploration process, Ring partnered with photography students from American Community School in Beirut and Centenary College of Louisiana in Shreveport. She asked individuals in both groups to create photographic images that they perceived to represent democracy in their everyday lives. Six themes guided the students’ photographic process: work, religion, participation, expression, commerce and “myself”. The result is an exhibition that juxtaposes images by Lebanese and American students to create an effective interplay of various interpretations of “democracy”.

Throughout the exhibition, Ring intentionally grouped images together to mirror the six themes that originally guided students’ interpretation of democracy. However, interpretation of the students’ photographs is left open viewer. Survey sheets provided by Ring at the galley’s entrance allow viewers to anonymously share their interpretation of students’ images. Viewers are encouraged to fill out an opinion sheet which will broaden the dialogue initiated by the Shreveport to Beirut Project and create interactive engagement with the ideas of democracy. All completed survey sheets will become a part of the history of the exhibition.

Calendar of Events

Gallery Talk by Jordan Ring
Sunday, April 21, 2:00 – 2:45 PM

Exhibition Reception open to the general public
Sunday, April 21, 2:45 -4:00 PM

Students who view this exhibition receive 50 Passport Points.  

May 14 – 22, 2013

May 28 – August 10, 2013

The exhibition P.O.R.N.: A Selection of Works by Brett Malone May 26 – August 11, 2013, opens to the general public at the Meadows Museum of Art on Sunday, May 26, 2013, and will remain on view through August 11. The Friends of the Algur Meadows Museum will host a reception for the artist on Saturday evening, May 25, from 5:30 – 7:30 PM in the Meadows Museum of Art galleries. An artist’ talk will begin the evening at 5:30 PM.

Brett Malone serves as the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Center located on Centenary Boulevard in Shreveport. Despite his hectic schedule, Malone is known in and around Shreveport for his paintings. He was recently juried into the Artist-at-Work Exhibition held at the Meadows Museum of Art in 2012 and continues to paint at his home when time permits.

Malone developed an affinity for the visual arts at an early age and his parents encouraged him. “My parents”, Malone says, “supported my creative energies as a child and sacrificed in order to provide art training for me from the age of 4 until I left for college. Growing up in the rural community of Plain Dealing, I was fortunate to have talented regional instructors such as Cathy Hill, Roseanne Vaughn, and Bobbie Scarborough during my formative years.”

While studying Psychology in college and during his early career in non-profit human services, Malone took a fifteen year hiatus from painting. Following his mother’s abduction and murder in 2000, Malone moved to San Francisco where he re-discovered the therapeutic benefits of self-expression through painting. Malone states, “As my creative energies began again to flow, I slowly navigated through one of the darkest periods of my life. “

The first painting he created during this period is entitled Friends and Acquaintances and acknowledges the importance that the love and support of friends, family and acquaintances played in the long healing process he experienced following his mother’s death. Malone says that the end result of this process was a major shift in his understanding of the world and the way in which he expressed his innermost thoughts, opinions, perceptions, and emotions. Friends and Acquaintances, on view in this exhibition, mirrored that radical inner shift since previous works were either realistic or representational.

Malone, who loves puns and word-play, says that the non-objective works comprising this exhibition have nothing to do with pornography. The title of this exhibition, P.O.R.N., is an anagram Malone created in 2005 before moving back to Shreveport from San Francisco and references an amalgamation of painting styles from the 20th and 21st centuries: Post (modern), Op (art), Retro, and Nouveau. Malone says his fondest hope is that viewers enjoy the works as much as he enjoyed creating them.