By Joanne Bailey-Boorsma
joanne@wktv.org
“Can you tell me what it is?” asked GRAM Director and CEO Dana Friis-Hansen to a group of media representatives as he pointed to a large black metal box sitting on a wire frame in the Grand Rapids Art Museum’s exhibition area.
“A safe?” someone responded.
“It’s a refrigerator,” Friis-Hansen said. “So it’s kind of a safe — a safe for food.”
The piece, a recent gift from the George R. Kravis II collection, is one example of the 125 different items featured in the current GRAM exhibit “A Decade at the Center: Recent Gifts and Acquisitions,” which is up through April 28.
The exhibit, which closes out a yearlong celebration of GRAM’s tenth anniversary at its 101 Monroe Center location, is designed to get to the heart of the museum — it’s collection, featuring works of art and design acquired through gifts and purchases from the last five years.
“The Grand Rapids Art Museum’s collection of more than 6,000 works is the heart of the Museum, and just like the city it serves, has grown and transformed over the course of its more than 100-year history,” Friis-Hansen said.
Featuring works from Rembrandt to Grand Rapids’ own Mathias J. Alten and the man behind the hLa Grande Vitesses, Alexander Calder, “Decades at the Center” showcases artists from six continents representing a variety of mediums fromm prints to sculpture. The oldest pieces are two etchings from Martin Schongauer from the 15th century with some of the newest being a selection of items from the gift of 100 design objects from Kravis, one of the premier American collectors.
Kravis, a broadcasting executive, collected thousands of pieces focused on industrial design. While the items were often everyday pieces — such as a bicycle or a phone — they showcased machine aesthetic and clean lines that married form with function, Friis-Hansen said.
“GRAM’s commitment to exhibiting and collecting design and craft is illustrated by the inclusion of important works of furniture, ceramics, glass and industrial design,” said GRAM Chief Curator Ron Platt. “The modern and contemporary design objects in the exhibition — ranging from furniture and lamps to tableware and electronics — marry function and beauty and show the power design has to enhance our daily lives.”
“I’m most excited about works that have never been viewed at GRAM before,” said GRAM Chief Curator Ron Platt.
Along with the items from the Kravis collection, other new pieces are two powerful black-and-white portraits by photographer Dawoud Bey, known for his photographs of adolescents and other often marginalized subjects. There is also the 1950s “Peonies on a Table” by American representational painter Jane Freilicher.
The exhibit has been paired with “A Legacy of Love: Selections from The Mable Perkins Collection.”
“Mabel Perkins was probably the first serious art collector in Grand Rapids,” Platt said. “We received a large portion of her collection of master prints.
“It’s really at the heart of GRAM’s story as a collecting institution and sort of at the heart of the idea of gifts to a collection being very, very important not only to an institution but to a community.”
For GRAM’s hours and admission fees, visit artmuseumgr.org or call 616-831-1000.
