Aileen June Wang is the new associate curator at the
Aileen June Wang, Associate Curator
Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University. Prior to this appointment, she taught art history at Penn State University Behrend College and Long Island University Post. She also worked at Christie’s New York as a client advisor to develop Asian and Asian American client bases. Her research interests lie in contemporary art, especially Chinese and Asian American, and secondarily in Renaissance art. Current passions include graffiti and street art, and art utilizing digital media and Web technology as artistic platforms. Aileen was awarded a fellowship in the 2012 National Endowment for Humanities Summer Institute on Asian American Art, hosted by New York University. Before relocating to Manhattan, Aileen regularly lectured for Long Island University’s popular Hutton House Lectures series and for Christie’s Education, and wrote reviews for Art in America and online art and culture magazine artcritical.com.
Please join us as we post information about pieces in the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art’s permanent collection from…to build up a rich collection… Selected works from The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art.
All pieces in this series are on display now at the museum. We hope you will join in the discussion and enjoy learning in-depth about the heart of the museum, our permanent collection. There are approximately 40 pieces by Thomas Hart Benton in the Beach Museum of Art’s permanent collection, but the one that seems to catch everyone’s attention is Jesse and Jake.
So, what does this piece make you wonder?
Thomas Hart Benton Jessie and Jake, 1942
According to Benton, he made Jesse and Jake when daughter Jessie was three years old. Our shepherd dog Jake impersonated the wolf in this Red Riding Hood theme. The area depicted is in our wood lot on Martha’s Vineyard and shows a path leading to my mother’s place there. Trees, white oak, grow thick at the trunk but do not get very high on our part of the Island because of the winds.
When Jake dies in 1946, Benton wrote a biographical obituary of the family dog, which appeared in the Vineyard Gazette. As Benton fondly recalled:
“Jake had a laughing face. His mouth was so set that, active or in repose, he had a smile. . . He was named Jake because he was a country dog, a country jake, who hadn’t learned city ways.”
In 1942 Benton made a lithograph based on Jesse and Jake. The image in the print is nearly identical to that in the painting except that the composition has been revered. An image drawn on a lithographic stone prints as a mirror image, a fact that Benton rarely considered when making lithographs.
Jessie and Jake was a gift of Jessie Benton Lyman, the artist’s daughter and the subject of the painting.
Find information and images of other Benton Pieces in the Beach Museum of Art’s permanent collection by using the museum’s searchable database. Simple choose “Benton, Thomas Hart” from the “Artist/Maker” drop down menu.
Please join us as we post information about pieces in the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art’s permanent collection from…to build up a rich collection… Selected works from The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art.
All pieces in this series are on display now at the museum. We hope you will join in the discussion and enjoy learning in-depth about the heart of the museum, our permanent collection. As you walk in the front doors, and again while in the galleries you see these two pieces by artist Wendell Castle. What do these pieces make you wonder?
Wendell Castle, Chair on Painted Rug, 1992 Mahogany and acrylic on aluminum KSU, Beach Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Nancy Benedict, Wayne Castle, and Wendell Castle in honor of Marvin Oliver Castle, class of 1931 and Bernice Decker Castle, class of 1931; and with funds provided by the G. E. Johnson Art Acquisition Fund
Wendell Castle is among the most important figures in the Studio Craft movement, a watershed development in the history of the twentieth-century art. In the late 1950s artists working in the craft tradition began to adopt many of the ideas about and approaches to object making that has previously been considered the purview of fine art. This resulted in an eschewal of many previously help beliefs regarding materials and the privileging of utility. Artists associated with the movement began to move away from the production of mass-produced functional objects toward the creation of unique or limited edition, and not necessarily utilitarian, objects. The blurring of the distinction between fine are and craft wrought by the Studio Craft movement anticipated and contributed to a similar development that achieved considerable momentum in the fine arts by the 1970s.
Born in Emporia, Kansas, and raised in Holton, Kansas, Castle attended the University of Kansas, where he earned a B.F.A. in industrial design and an M.F.A. in sculpture in 1958 and 1961 respectively. Castle is perhaps best known for his inventive sculptural creations that take the form of furniture. Operating in the realms between furniture and art, and between art and craft, Castle’s work is characterized by his consummate craftsmanship and his witty, sophisticated, and playful approach to materials. All of Castle’s work is sculptural in nature; some is functional and some is not. For example, Castle’s Molar Chair of 1969-70, a canonic work in the history of twentieth-century design, was created as a production piece. The glass-reinforced polyester chair was manufactured by Northern Plastics Corporation and distributed by Stendig and Beylerian Limited. Castle’s Ghost of 1985, on the other hand, is a tour de force of trompe l’oeil sculpture in mahogany featuring a tall case clock nearly completely covered with a fabric sheet. Unlike, Molar Chair, this work has no practical application. Its utility is purely aesthetic and conceptual.
Wendell Castle, Mid-Summer, 2000 Bronze with patina KSU, Beach Museum of Art, purchased with funds provided by Nancy Benedict, Wayne Castle, and Wendell Castle in honor of Marvin Oliver Castle, class of 1931 and Bernice Decker Castle, class of 1931
Chair on Painted Rug and Mid-Summer are wonderful examples of Castle’s propensity for playfully calling into question our conventionally held beliefs about the nature of art, craft, and materials. Both works testify to Castle’s proclivity for cross-pollination between and across materials, media, and function. Chair on Painted Rug is constructed of a block of mahogany carved in the shape of a chair, which is mounted on a rug made of aluminum, both of which have been incised with a chainsaw and painted. By painting the surface of the mahogany, Castle has obscured, and thus denied, the wood’s true nature. The painted surface also mitigates the piece’s ability to function as furniture because of the preciosity it imparts to the object. The leafy, organic painted imagery draped over chair and rug functions as an independent yet unifying element, serving to coalesce the disparate materials of mahogany and aluminum.
Mid-Summer, a bronze interpretation of Castle’s idea, is equally mischievous. The treatment of surface and form of the piece, installed out-of-doors, mimics the material of its mahogany and aluminum counterpart. Yet, unlike Chair on Painted Rug, it operates in both the aesthetic and functional realms. Because Mid-Summer is made of bronze, visitors to the grounds of the Beach Museum of Art are allowed to sit in the chair, which is a fine place to ponder the logic that prohibits them from doing the same in Chair on Painted Rug. BN
About Us
The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art furthers the teaching, research, and service missions of Kansas State University by collecting, studying, caring for, and presenting the visual art of Kansas and the region.
