Art Department Plans Retrospective Exhibition of Work of Former Faculty Member Charles McGee
Charles McGee, Maquette for Noah's Ark, 1987,
polychrome steel, 47 x 70 x 17 in
A $15,000 award from the Michigan Council for the Humanities will support Energy: Charles McGee at Eighty-Five, a 60-year look back at the work of eminent Detroit African-American artist Charles McGee, along with a catalogue and related art-education outreach programs. The exhibition will be held in the Ford Gallery in Ford Hall and in the University Gallery in the Student Center from Nov. 9 to Dec. 19, 2009.
“Charles McGee is one of the most important Michigan artists of the last century,” says Project Director Julia Myers. “His message of the interconnectedness and equality of all living beings is intensely relevant today. Since 1971, he has completed numerous major public commissions in Michigan, including three large-scale works for Detroit-area hospitals in the last ten years.” Highly acclaimed, McGee received the $50,000 Kresge Detroit Eminent Artist Award in 2008; the Michigan Artist Award, a Governor’s Award for Arts and Culture given by ArtServe Michigan, in 1989; and the Michigan Arts Award, given by the Michigan Foundation for the Arts (now the Michigan Council for Arts and Humanities) in 1978.
The exhibition will include sixty-to-seventy works covering each decade of McGee’s sixty-year career. The fully illustrated catalogue, which Myers has written, will document the evolution of McGee’s work, set it within its national and regional artistic, social, historical, and cultural contexts, and critically analyze the style and content of individual works.
After EMU, the exhibition will travel to the Birmingham-Bloomfield Art Association in Birmingham, Michigan, and to the Center Galleries at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit. Programs will also be organized for K-12 students in Washtenaw County, especially in Ypsilanti. EMU Art Educator Elizabeth Ament will work with the Ypsilanti schools to organize elementary-school tours, as well as with Ann Arbor groups like Peace Neighborhood Center for after-school tours.
