Tag Archives: Beverly Pepper

WKTV Journal: Frederik Meijer Gardens, the Vietnamese New Year, and KDL’s Lance Werner

 

In the latest episode of the WKTV Journal, we head over to the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park to celebrate the work of artist Beverly Pepper. The Gardens has an exhibition of Pepper’s work, “Drawn Into Form: Sixty Years of Drawings and Prints by Beverly Pepper,” up through April 29.

 

Also see a story on Meijer Gardens and its growing collection of works associated with its sculptors, including Pepper.

 

Recently the Vietnamese community came together to celebrate Tet, the Vietnamese New Year and we spend some time with KDL Executive Director Lance Werner who talks about being named Michigan’s first Librarian of the Year by the Library Journal. Also in this newscast, LocalFirst’s Mieke Stroub talks about the Good for Grand Rapids campaign and the West Michigan Tourist Association’s Courtney Sheffer gives us some more tips and ideas on budget friendly places in West Michigan.

 

The WKTV Journal airs on WKTV Channel 25 Mondays at 9 p.m., Tuesdays at 7 p.m., and Fridays at 10 a.m.

Meijer Gardens’ Beverly Pepper exhibit highlights growing artistic research collection

A model of Beverly Pepper’s monumental sculpture “Galileo’s Wedge”, center, is one of the objects featured in the exhibit “Drawn Into Form: Sixty Years of Drawings and Prints by Beverly Pepper”. (WKTV)

By K.D. Norris

ken@wktv.org

 

There is a progression of development for an artistic institution, in some ways gaining a particular piece of art is only the beginning of an institution’s relationship with an artist and that artist’s legacy — often, the institution becomes part of the artist legacy.

 

Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park’s 2009 acquisition of Beverly Pepper’s monumental sculpture “Galileo’s Wedge” — a soaring steel object of visual beauty and, simultaneously, engineering mastery which rises nearly 40 feet into the sky and an undefined depth into the ground — led directly to it gaining more than 900 artistic items associated with the artist.

 

Some of those associated artistic items, part of a trove of prints and models and photos donated by the artist to Meijer Gardens, form the focus of the current featured exhibit at Meijer Gardens, “Drawn Into Form: Sixty Years of Drawings and Prints by Beverly Pepper”, which opened Feb. 2 and will run through April 29.

 

Those items, many of which are and will in the future will be of great interest to scholars and researchers delving into Pepper’s art and artistic process, are also an example of the ongoing progression of of Meijer Gardens from being a showcase of art to being an institution of art.

 

Joseph Antenucci Becherer, chief curator and vice president of Meijer Gardens, on the opening day of the exhibit. (WKTV)

“I think it is a natural progression,” Joseph Antenucci Becherer, chief curator and vice president of Meijer Gardens, said to WKTV. “We are a young organization, in many ways, but we are aging well and we are aging with some rapidity. And the idea that we have this enormous permanent collection, there is more than 300 sculptures in our permanent collection, that it is supplemented by prints and drawings is a natural progression.”

 

And that progression fits in naturally with the mission of Meijer Gardens.

 

“The mission of Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park has been its commitment to sculpture, and gardens and horticulture, and the arts,” Becherer said. “We are very fortunate because the vast majority of our permanent collection is out on display, all times of the year, all seasons, in the park. However, from the very beginning, we have also collected two-dimension works, prints and drawings, as long as that person was primarily recognized as a sculptor.

 

“We have prints by Henry Moore, we have prints by Louise Nevelson, we have prints by many of the other sculptors who are part of this collection,” he said. “But this group is incredible as a gift from Beverly Pepper, more than 900 works. This collection will be here permanently. It can be accessed with advance notice, by scholars, by people that are doing research. I would say that in the future, when our new building opens, it will be much easier for scholars to come in, to access the collection.”

 

And, of course, the Pepper collection also gives Meijer Gardens “the opportunity to work with sister organizations across the country, around the world, to loan objects,” he added. “So these prints and drawings would be available to them if they would want to show them, to participate in come kind of exhibition. So really it is a great resource for us, but it is a great resource for the world.”

 

 

Meijer Gardens, with acquisition, forms relationship with artist

 

Pepper’s donation, and the current exhibit, are also an example of both a unique opportunity for Meijer Gardens and a not-uncommon opportunity when an artist and an artistic institution have established a trusting relationship.

 

“What you see often time happening with major artists that don’t have their own museum or establish a big estate, or something along those lines, is that they make major gifts to cultural organizations,” Becherer said. “So we are sort of following in a time-honored tradition.”

 

And that relationship, that tradition, was touched upon in a statement by the artist herself.

 

“Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park has clearly demonstrated a strong commitment to my sculpture and I am enthusiastic to now have this major body of my work there.” Pepper said in supplied material. “To have in one location a space to study, compare and sequence my drawings and prints is an exceptional opportunity.”

 

Pepper  was born 1922 in Brooklyn, N.Y., and now lives and works in Italy. Her works have been exhibited and collected by major arts institutions and galleries around the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Les Jardins du Palais Royal in Paris, and The Museum of Modern Art in Sapporo, Japan.

 

Pepper is world-renowned for her “monumental” works — such as “Galileo’s Wedge” — which often incorporate industrial metals like iron, bronze, stainless steel and stone into sculpture of a monumental scale.

 

Associated with the exhibit will be several special events including a March 18 discussion on “Five Great Women Sculptors” by Suzanne Eberle, Professor of Art History at Kendall College of Art & Design. The talk will focus on important female artists — including Pepper, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Louise Bourgeois, Barbara Hepworth, and Louise Nevelson — who have worked in large scale.

 

For more information visit meijergardens.org .

 

Meijer Gardens’ ‘Drawn Into Form’ exhibit to focus Pepper’s visionary creative process

 

By K.D. Norris

ken@wktv.org

 

There is probably not a vantage point on the grounds of the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park where you cannot see Beverly Pepper’s monumental sculpture “Galileo’s Wedge”. Depending on one’s world view, it is either an authoritative metal finger pointing toward the heavens or an elongated monolith-like spike sinking deep into the Earth.

 

Either way, the 2009 acquisition by Meijer Gardens is a soaring steel object of visual beauty and, simultaneously, engineering mastery which rises nearly 40 feet into the sky and an undefined depth into the ground.

 

It is that imagination-bending blend of engineering mastery and visual beauty which will be the focus of the next featured exhibit at Meijer Gardens as “Drawn Into Form: Sixty Years of Drawings and Prints by Beverly Pepper” opens Feb. 2, 2018.

 

The exhibition is the first public showing of the gift of Pepper’s expansive print and drawing archives that was given to Meijer Gardens in 2016 and 2017.  Spanning seven decades of work by the contemporary sculptor, the archives includes hundreds of drawings, prints, works on paper and notebooks, with many containing sketches of her major sculptural endeavors on display around the world.

 

Beverly Pepper at Meijer Gardens. (Undated photo taken by George Tatge)

“The 2018 retrospective surveying sixty-five years of work is a rare luxury, and an unbelievable opportunity,” Pepper said in supplied material. “Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park has clearly demonstrated a strong commitment to my sculpture and I am enthusiastic to now have this major body of my work there.” Pepper said in supplied material. “To have in one location a space to study, compare and sequence my drawings and prints is an exceptional opportunity.”

 

Pepper (born 1922 in Brooklyn, N.Y.) lives and works in Italy. Her works have been exhibited and collected by major arts institutions and galleries around the world, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Les Jardins du Palais Royal in Paris, and The Museum of Modern Art in Sapporo, Japan.

 

Joseph Antenucci Becherer, chief curator and vice president of Meijer Gardens, sees the exhibit as a logical public extension of the artist’s gift.

 

“The importance of the gift and this exhibition simply cannot be overstated,” Becherer said in supplied material. “The opportunity to experience the sheer brilliance of Pepper’s work and trace the trajectory of her career from a realist aesthetic in the late 1940s and 50s, through her embrace of abstraction to become one of America’s leading abstract sculptors, is beyond compare.”

 

The exhibition will run through April 19, 2018.

 

Pepper is world-renowned for her work, which often incorporates industrial metals like iron, bronze, stainless steel and stone into sculpture of a monumental scale, but her vast drawing and print repertoire is lesser known.

 

Associated with the exhibit will be several special events including a March 18 discussion on “Five Great Women Sculptors” by Suzanne Eberle, Professor of Art History at Kendall College of Art & Design. The talk will focus on important female artists — including Pepper, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Louise Bourgeois, Barbara Hepworth, and Louise Nevelson — who have worked in large scale.

 

For more information visit meijergardens.org .

 

Meijer Gardens gains gift of sculptor Pepper’s artistic archive

Untitled; Studies for Stainless Steel Sculptures by Beverly Pepper. (Supplied)

WKTV staff

 

Iconic American sculptor Beverly Pepper — whose monumental sculpture “Galileo’s Wedge” dominates one area of the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park — is giving the Grand Rapids area a present on her 94th birthday.

 

“Galileo’s Wedge” (2009) by Beverly Pepper, measuring roughly 35 feet in height. (Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park/William J. Hebert)

Meijer Gardens today announced the gift to its permanent collection of Pepper’s expansive print and drawing archives. The collection includes works spanning seven decades of of her artistic life including hundreds of drawings, prints, works on paper and notebooks – many containing sketches of her major sculptural endeavors.

 

Also Tuesday, Meijer Gardens announced it will host a retrospective exhibition of work drawn from the archives in early 2018.

 

“The enormity of Beverly Pepper’s gift cannot be understated,” Joseph Becherer, chief curator and vice president of Meijer Gardens, said in supplied material. “Drawing has been an integral part of her artistic practice, but like her printmaking, is little known even to scholars.”

 

Beverly Pepper at her studio. (Supplied/George Tatge)

Pepper is renowned for her monumental works which often incorporate industrial metals such as iron, bronze and stainless steel, as well as stone. Meijer Gardens engagement with the artist began with 2009 commission of the “Galileo’s Wedge.”

 

Explaining the reason for her gift was made clear in a supplied statement by Pepper: “To have in one location a space to study, compare and sequence my drawings and prints is an exceptional opportunity; I am most grateful to leave this record and have the curatorial team there looking after my work.”

 

Pepper works are part of the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., Les Jardins du Palais Royal in Paris, France and The Museum of Modern Art in Sapporo, Japan.