Exhibitions

Eager by Allison Schulnik

October 1, 2022 - October 31, 2022

Eager uses clay and stop-motion photography to create a riotous fantasy world populated by a cast of human and non- human creatures united in a state of continuous transformation as they dance, slice each other open, and wear one another’s bodies. Using puppets, in-camera effects, and incorporating materials such as clay, wood, fabric, glue, paint, and wire, Allison Schulnik builds her stop motion clay-mation worlds alone and without any digital manipulation. For this work Schulnik commissioned close friend and composer Aaron M. Olson to create a three-part musical score. Schulnik then choreographed, animated, and edited the film around his song and worked with cinematographer Helder King Sun on cinematic lighting and technical wizardry. Schulink choreographs her characters in compositions that embody the spirit of macabre, where comedy, tragedy, beauty, love, and death fantastically merge in a celebration of life and otherness. Discussing her practice, Schulnik contends, “I like to blend earthly fact, blatant fiction to form a stage of tragedy, farce, and raw, ominous beauty – at times capturing otherworld buffoonery, and other times presenting a simple earthly dignified moment.”

LaToya Ruby Frazier: Flint Is Family In Three Acts

September 3, 2022 - December 30, 2022

“No matter how dark a situation may be, a camera can extract the light and turn a negative into a positive. In creating Flint Is Family In Three Acts, I see the role of photographs as empowering and enacting visible change: in Act I, the photographs bear witness and reclaim history; in Act II, the photographs reveal a hidden narrative; in Act III, the photographs are a catalyst for obtaining resources.” —LaToya Ruby Frazier

Flint Is Family In Three Acts is a multi-part exhibition by renowned artist LaToya Ruby Frazier. For five years, Frazier researched and collaborated with two poets, activists, mothers and residents of Flint, Michigan, Shea Cobb and Amber Hasan, as they endured one of the most devastating ecological crises in U.S. history. Resulting in a monumental oeuvre of photographs, video, and texts Frazier developed Flint Is Family In Three Acts (2016–2021) to advocate for access to clean and safe drinking water for all regardless of race, religion and economic status. The series records stories of surviving and thriving, especially within racialized and marginalized neighborhoods in Flint, to ensure that they remained visible in national debates concerning environmental justice. Drawing inspiration from the urgency in Frazier’s work, which also sheds light on building equitable and inclusive futures Stamps Gallery, part of Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design at University of Michigan, initiated a partnership with the Flint Institute of Arts and the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University to bring this important exhibition together for the first time in Michigan. As co-presenters of this landmark exhibition our goal is to offer a creative pedagogical platform that reaches broader audiences across Michigan and beyond—Flint is Family: Act I (2016–2017) will take place at the Flint Institute of Arts, Act II (2017–2019) at the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, and Act III (2019) at Stamps Gallery. The exhibition served as a catalyst to bring three disparate institutions together to deepen our understanding of individual and institutional agency in advocating for equity, transparency and environmental justice in our respective communities, while also highlighting the role of the artist as an agent for enacting positive social change.  

Organized by Stamps Gallery in partnership with the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, and the Flint Institute of Arts 

Curated by Srimoyee Mitra, Tracee Glab, and Steven L. Bridges with the assistance of Jennifer Junkermeier-Khan, Rachel Winter, and Rachael Holstege.

Walk on the Wild Side

August 6, 2022 - February 5, 2023

Animals, both real and mythological, have occupied an important place in art from prehistoric to modern times, often carrying a rich variety of symbolic associations. These creatures have served as vehicles for allegory, moral instruction, and have stood as symbols for power and social status. The human relationship with other species is complex and ever-changing with images of animals in art continuing to entertain and inspire us. 

 From functional to decorative, the artworks in Walk on the Wild Side feature various animal groups from amphibians and reptiles to mammals and the fantastical hybrid creatures. The exhibition, drawn from the FIA’s permanent collection, explores animals and their place in culture through three-dimensional works of various time periods and media including stone, ceramic, and glass.

Being Human: Contemporary Art from the Rubell Museum

May 14, 2022 - August 28, 2022

This exhibition explores the diverse world of contemporary art through the lens of the Rubell Museum’s collection. Art of the late 20th and early 21st centuries generally defy categorization and the “-isms” common in previous stylistic movements. However, the works selected from the Rubell Collection for this exhibition share the common theme of depicting the complexity of experiences that make us human.  Through painting, sculpture, and photography, these artworks ignite emotional responses to various issues, including gender, race, sexuality, embodiment, identity, love, life, and death. By contemplating the past, present, and future, artists interpret their own and others’ existence through a thought-provoking visual vocabulary that transcends the limits of language.

Not meant to be an exhaustive or universal picture of contemporary art, Being Human highlights some of the best works and artists from the Rubell Museum, located in Miami, Florida, some of which will be seen at the FIA for the first time. Nor is this exhibition meant to fully capture what it means to be human, but rather to show some of the ways artists have dealt with complex realities, pointing out willful or inadvertent blindness to what’s all around us. In an era of doubt, confusion, and disconnect, this exhibition presents unique perspectives, not necessarily providing answers, but offering the way art provokes contemplation, understanding, compassion, and introspection.

The Rubell Family Collection was established in 1964 in New York City, shortly after its founders Donald and Mera Rubell were married. It is now one of the world’s largest privately owned contemporary art collections. In addition to displaying internationally established artists, they also actively acquire, exhibit, and champion emerging artists working at the forefront of contemporary art.

Organized by the Flint Institute of Arts and the Rubell Museum

Sponsored by

   Friends of Modern Art

Minglings: A Journey Across Time

April 9, 2022 - October 9, 2022

Minglings: A Journey Across Time explores a contemporary fiber artist’s engagement with the past. Inspired by a tapestry remnant from China’s Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), Gerhardt Knodel embarked on an exploration into the potential of how this fabric from another time and place could inform his present work. While portions of the tapestry were deteriorating, Knodel isolated 40 separate fragments that included images of butterflies, flowering branches, undulating lines, and a blue sky. Each small piece of finely woven silk became a new composition of abstracted, incomplete subjects that he could re-create.

Featuring a series of drawings, fiber artwork, and mixed-media objects, the exhibition will lead you on a journey between cultures, beginning in China and arriving at the artist’s studio in Pontiac, Michigan. These works will also show how beautiful objects migrate through time, carrying with them their cultural identity but also being reinterpreted in the context of the current pandemic. Minglings demonstrates how the past is never dead in the hands of the artist, offering the opportunity for rediscovery and reconsideration.

Knodel’s studio practice spans nearly 50 years, 37 of them invested as Artist- in-Residence, then director, and now Director Emeritus of Cranbrook Academy of Art. He has exhibited internationally and is a recipient of numerous awards, including the American Crafts Council 2018 Gold Medal and the Distinguished Educators Award from the James Renwick Alliance of the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Gerhardt Knodel gives a talk on his workshop and works.

All Things Being Equal

March 1, 2022 - March 31, 2022

All Things Being Equal is a looped video that explores the notion of suspended trauma. Through the visual tool of mass media, the artist shows how traumatic incidents from the past can repeat and replay, offering the viewer a shared experience. This video depicts the repetitive movements of a figure in confinement, beleaguered by water, an element both destructive and sustaining. Here the water moves almost as an independent agency, and the figure is neither suffocating nor surviving.

Sons: Seeing the Modern African American Male

January 22, 2022 - April 16, 2022

Sons: Seeing the Modern African American Male features black-and-white and color photographs by Jerry Taliaferro of 49 men from the Flint community. This exhibition is much more than a photographic study, as it also aims to explore perceptions and biases. In Taliaferro’s words, “Recent events point to the urgent need for conversations about the contemporary Black American male. Any effort, however humble, to foster an understanding of this largely misunderstood and often marginalized segment of the American population is of utmost importance.” 

For his subjects, Taliaferro photographed men who were nominated by the community in early 2021. The resulting images are divided into two sections: first a black-and-white photograph of just their face, and then later in the exhibition a photograph in color, where the subjects were instructed to “be themselves.” Visitors will have the opportunity to reflect and reconcile their initial reactions to the portraits, after getting to know the men and their stories through text labels and QR codes that lead to interviews conducted by the artist. 

This exhibition marks both the return of Jerry Taliaferro to Flint and the fifth anniversary of Women of a New Tribe, a popular exhibition that featured 49 black-and-white photographs by Taliaferro of women from the Flint community. 

An accompanying exhibition catalogue is available for purchase in the Museum Shop.

Sponsored by

McCombs Family Flint Non-Endowed Fund of the Community Foundation of Greater Flint

Reverse Television–Portraits of Viewers (Compilation Tape)

January 1, 2022 - January 31, 2022

Bill Viola inverts the position and gaze of the television viewer in a series of 44 portraits of individuals sitting at home in their living rooms, staring silently at the static camera as though it were a TV set. Produced specifically for broadcast television, the original one-minute segments of over 40 subjects from the Boston area were intended as unannounced inserts during the daily programming schedule. Viola essentially subverts the time and space of broadcast television, as the extended duration of these real-time portraits interrupts the spatial and temporal field of TV scheduling, like edits. Writes Viola, “Two classical poses emerge in this work­—the formal photographic portrait and the posture of the private television viewer at home. The work momentarily inverts the classical TV/viewer relationship, and television becomes a medium of reverse portraiture.”

Steeped in Tradition

October 23, 2021 - March 20, 2022

After water, tea is the most consumed beverage in the world and it plays a profound role in many cultures. Over 2 billion cups are consumed per day worldwide. Because of this, teaware—objects related to the consumption of tea—has been a popular outlet for artistic expression. This exhibition includes contemporary teapots, tea bowls, cups and saucers and other tea-related objects from the museum’s permanent collection. Whether they are intended to be fully functional, ornamental, or somewhere in between, these artworks showcase the endless possibilities for creativity in teaware.

Teapots (along with other teaware in this exhibition) can hold clues to history, cultural and societal practices, identity, and self-expression. Many contemporary artists are drawn to them not only for their important place in the history of ceramics but also for the technical challenge. Making a teapot requires mastery of many techniques and is somewhat a rite of passage for many artists working in clay. Elements like the handle can be handbuilt, one of the oldest techniques for working with clay, while the body and spout could be produced on the potter’s wheel, all of which takes practice and skill. While some artists prefer to create functional teapots, others adapt the form with no intention of it ever being used.

The Hollow Coin

October 1, 2021 - October 31, 2021

The Hollow Coin explores roles of authority in public space and the intersection of personal and historical narratives. The video combines documentary footage of New York City’s rapidly disappearing network of payphones with audio of a covertly recorded telephone exchange between an actor and an unknowing bystander. In the surreptitiously captured conversation, an attempted “information leak” is infused with an absurd story and a historical anecdote. The work’s title refers to a Soviet spy who was apprehended in 1953 after mistakenly paying his newspaper delivery boy with a hollow coin that contained a microfilm of an encrypted message. Throughout the video a parallel sequence of events reveals that images from the video itself have been stored on an SD card concealed within a hollow coin and inserted into the payphone from which the call was made.