SPRING 2009

In early March we received approval from Santa  Clara University’s Provost to post our Curator of Exhibit and Collections vacant position. This was welcome news to all, especially during these difficult financial times and with a position management system in place at Santa Clara. Applications are coming in and the recruitment process is moving along smoothly. Our goal is to have this position filled within the next few months.

 The spring quarter is about to begin. In eleven weeks the 2008-2009 academic year will come to a close. Where did the academic year go? Our students are busy completing their year of study and are making plans for travel or are gearing up for work assignments during the summer break. Some of our students are graduating with their plans of securing full-time employment, which comes at a difficult time with our current economy being the worst in decades. There are signs of budding trees and bursts of color from blooming flowers which signifies rejuvenation and new beginnings. It is definitely a time of transition and change.

On Friday, April 17, we will open Tech Tools of the Trade: Contemporary New Media Art with a preview reception from 7:00-9:00 p.m. This survey exhibition features eighteen artists whose work uses new media─ defined in the context of this exhibition as electronic, digital, and web-based. This exhibition explores the ways technology is shaping our lives and our world around us. It is designed to be accessible to first-time new media audiences as well as sophisticated viewers.

I would also like to draw your attention to a From the Vault exhibition titled, Lou Albert-Lasard: A German Expressionist in Bohemian Paris, which is being showcased in Gallery IV within our public display cabinets. These works were discovered during our current conservation assessment survey supported through a generous grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. We realized we had a limited amount of information about this artist and body of work. Senior art history student Lauren Baines conducted research, guest-curated From the Vault exhibition, and wrote an accompanying brochure documenting her finds about this important female artist. I hope you get a chance to enjoy this mini presentation of these works on paper which are long over-due for recognition.

 

See you in the galleries soon!

 

Rebecca M. Schapp

Director

 

WINTER 2009

We hope you and your family celebrated a joyous holiday season and New Year! We are grateful for your continued support and interest in our ongoing programs, especially during these times of economic uncertainty. There is still much turmoil and unrest in many parts of the world. May we all continue to be patient, tolerant, and caring towards each other as we face all of the challenges that lie ahead.

Our fall quarter exhibits were very well received and our attendance was strong. The Hapa Project talk by Kip Fulbeck and the panel discussion Meditation Into Action: Three Perspectives on Art, Social Justice, and Spirituality provided for interesting and powerful dialogue among students, faculty, staff, and community members. As we approached the holidays, all artworks were prepared for shipping out and the Evri Kwong: Just Pretend Everything is OK exhibit was on its way to the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center. If you know people in the Washington, D.C. area and thoroughly enjoyed the exhibition yourself, please to not hesitate to pass the viewing dates for the exhibition on:  January 24 – March 22, 2009.

Our upcoming exhibits promise to be very interesting as they directly address our relationship to the natural world by highlighting environmental issues and sustainability. We are grateful for the collaboration with the professors of the Santa Clara University Biology Department in conjunction with our permanent collection exhibit titled, Flora and Fauna. The selections are varied and quite unique as they directly relate to each faculty member’s particular area of research.

As we were closing the doors of the museum prior to the holidays we received a generous check in the mail from the Marmor Foundation. This gift was facilitated by our Museum Enhancement Board President, Paula Kirkeby in the amount of $10,000 for general museum operating support. We are grateful for this major gift of recognition and will keep you informed of the ways it will support the museum over the next year.

As many of you are already aware, the past and current shifts in the economy are presenting the tightest financial outlook in decades, and we are not, nor is the university, immune to the effects of this downturn. We have been looking at ways to create greater efficiencies and reduce our costs. We anticipate operating costs needing to be reduced over a period of time, and to that end we have already begun cutting costs wherever we can.

One significant change we have recently implemented is the production of our quarterly printed newsletter in an electronic format. For decades we produced a costly printed newsletter, and we realized it was time to make a change. This change is motivated by numerous factors, one being the reality of needing to allocate our human and financial resources in more efficient ways, but the other is the increasing need to be sensitive to environmental issues.

We are currently in the process of coordinating our subsequent accreditation site visit with the American Association of Museums to be conducted by museum professionals who serve as external site reviewers. We anticipate that our visit will be conducted in the 2009 calendar year and we will continue to keep you informed as more information is available and plans are solidified.

As we begin the New Year staffing changes are before us. Karen Kienzle, our Assistant Director for Exhibitions, Education, and Community Outreach will be leaving the museum to take the Director position at the Palo Alto Art Center. We thank her for her commitment to the de Saisset Museum over the past seven years and are thrilled about this new and exciting opportunity for her. We wish her much success and many accomplishments in all her future endeavors.

Lastly, a permanent collection piece is on loan to a museum in Berlin, Germany! The Museum Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin requested the loan of Terry Fox's 1971 video piece Clutch from the de Saisset's permanent collection. Fox passed away in October 2008, and the piece will be shown at his memorial at the Museum Hamburger Bahnhof in January 2009.

We wish to thank you for your commitment to the de Saisset Museum. Your continued support is critical, especially during these economic times. May we ride out these times together and come out even stronger as a much needed organization serving our community.

With gratitude,
Rebecca M. Schapp
Director

FALL 2008

The summer passed so quickly! We closed the exhibition Eye on the Sixties:Vision, Body, and Soul: Selections from the Collection of Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson on June 15, 2008 after an amazing six-month run. The de Saisset Museum was proud to host this exhibit that focused on the artistic production of the 1960s, with a special emphasis on art made in California. Many thanks to the Harry W. and Mary Margaret Anderson, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and curator and SCU associate professor Andrea Pappas for making this exhibition a success.

With the Spring exhibition closed, we focused our attention on completing documentation for the Museum’s re-accreditation with the American Association of Museums. We assembled seven binders full of information about the Museum: leadership and organizational structures; mission and planning; collections stewardship; education and interpretation; financial stability; and facilities and risk management. We will be planning for a site visit to meet with AAM re-accreditation reviewers for an on-site visit at the Museum in the coming year.

The Museum also completed a major flooring project this summer, with bamboo planks replacing the carpet in Gallery I and II. In alliance with the University’s efforts to “go green,” the bamboo flooring is an environmentally low-impact choice. We hope you will enjoy the exciting new look in these galleries.

With Fall’s arrival, we welcome students and visitors back to the campus and the Museum with three powerful exhibitions: Evri Kwong: Just Pretend Everthing’s OK, Winter in America, and The Hapa Project. These exhibitions will provide many opportunties for our audience to reflect on and discuss timely issues of social justice and identity. I hope you will join us for some of the programs related to the exhibitions and renew your membership in support of them. See you in the galleries soon!

Rebecca M. Schapp, Director


SPRING/SUMMER 2008

We hope you and your family celebrated a joyous holiday season and New Year! We are grateful for your continued support and interest in our ongoing programs. Our world continues to be filled with unrest and tension. May we continue to teach tolerance in hopes the world will become a more peaceful place.

Our fall quarter was successful with the presentation of Experience Teaches: Santa Clara University Art Faculty Exhibition. This exhibition celebrated the artistic achievements of faculty in Santa Clara University’s Art and Art History Department, featuring the work of both tenured and tenure-track faculty and long-term lecturers in the studio area. As a companion exhibit, the de Saisset Museum featured a permanent collection exhibition curated by Art History faculty. The exhibition showcased the aesthetic diversity of the art department.

We offered three openings for the exhibit—one for the SCU community, one public reception, and one reception staged in Second Life, a virtual 3-D world which is completely built and owned by its “residents.” On Santa Clara Island in this virtual world, visitors were able to find a simulation of SCU’s new Learning Commons, the Mission Church, and the de Saisset Museum. Second Life offers a medium of communication and creative expression for today’s students who embrace tools such as instant messaging, social networking spaces, and multiplayer online games. We look forward to continuing to explore the medium for teaching, learning, and social networking.

With generous support from Mission City Community Fund we were able to offer interpretive materials for our temporary exhibits to cover the entire academic year in the form of Family Activity Guides and Guide-by-Cell audio tours. Our first offering of Guide-by-Cell was with the Experience Teaches exhibition. Our faculty members were able to record in-depth information about their individual artworks and visitors were able to call a number on their cell phone to access the audio content while looking at the artwork in the gallery. Many of our visitors took advantage of this program and could be found often in the galleries with their cell phones in hand.


Susan Prather, Great Egret, Elkhorn Slough, California, 2002, digital photograph, 9.3 x 14 in.

Last July the Museum lost a dear friend and dedicated volunteer, Susan Prather. She gave her valuable time to our organization for eight years and was getting prepared to be our next Docent Council Chair. She had an insatiable interest and curiosity for lifelong learning and demonstrated her commitment by getting involved in practically every aspect our organization. She worked as a collection volunteer on a weekly basis, served on the Museum Advisory Board in past years, and more recently became a California History docent who led fourth-grade schoolchildren through our permanent California History galleries. She was an avid photographer and loved to travel to places in California to document the various landscapes and wildlife. She also created a photo series documenting each of the California Missions, and Father Locatelli selected her photograph of the Santa Clara Mission as the image for his Christmas card several years ago. Susan spent much time with us, and we will miss her dedication, curiosity, humor, and wit. A white orchid has been on display in the Museum foyer to honor her memory.

See you in the galleries soon!

Rebecca M. Schapp
Director



WINTER 2007


Artist Kim Jung Hwa demonstrated textile dying with natural plant dyes at her lecture on July 8, 2007. Photo: Karen Kienzle

Welcome to the 2007/2008 academic year! I hope your summer was restful and rejuvenating. We have had a very active summer at the Museum with the exhibition Variations of Grass, Light, and the Wind: The Plant Dye Art of Kim Jung Hwa. Yeongcheon, Korea-based artist Kim Jung Hwa provided our visitors with a rich experience of abstract, landscape, and figural textiles dyed with natural dye processes in the first exhibition of her work in the United States. We were proud to have worked with Site Creations in Menlo Park on this landmark exhibition.

    In April the Museum was awarded a grant of $44,045 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for permanent collection conservation support. This grant will be used for a detailed conservation survey of the Museum’s 5,045-object works on paper collection. One of the Museum’s strongest collections, it includes prints from the Renaissance period to the present. Santa Clara-based paper conservator Kathleen Orlenko is performing the two-year survey, identifying the extent of any deterioration and recommending treatments and priorities. With detailed condition reports and treatment proposals in hand, the Museum can move forward in seeking funding for conservation of works on paper significant to the permanent collection.

    The Museum embarked on another important two-year project this summer: reaccreditation by the American Association of Museums (AAM). All accredited museums must undergo reviews within ten years of their last accreditation. The Museum has been accredited by the AAM since 1979, and our last accreditation was awarded in 1999. In July we began a rigorous year-long self-study that will culminate in a comprehensive report to the AAM and a site visit by their reviewers. While the process is challenging, involving a significant investment of time and resources from all of the Museum’s staff, the rewards are great. Accreditation by the AAM is a widely respected recognition of an institution’s commitment to excellence, accountability, high professional standards, and continued improvement. We will keep you posted on our progress as we move through the reaccreditation process.

    As our members know, membership renewals were sent out at the end of July. If summer activities have kept you too busy to renew your membership, fall would be a great time to renew your support for the Museum. You now have the option to join or renew online. I extend a heartfelt thank you to all members who have already renewed!

    Finally, I would like to introduce you to our new preparator, Ernest Jolly. Ernest has worked as a preparator at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, the Brooklyn Museum, Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts at Stanford University, History San Jose, Mills College Art Museum, Oakland Museum of California, and Zeum. We have enjoyed working with him since June—welcome, Ernest!

Rebecca M. Schapp
Director