Audrey Flack: Recent Pages from an Ancient Past

Audrey Flack: Recent Pages from an Ancient Past
May 19 – June 30, 2012

Feminist Fete honoring Audrey Flack on June 3, 2012

Mason Gross Galleries, Rutgers University

New Brunswick, NJ- The Rutgers Institute for Women and Art (IWA) is delighted to honor world renowned American realist painter and sculptor, Audrey Flack, at a Feminist Fete on June 3, 2012, on the occasion of her exhibition, Audrey Flack: Recent Pages from an Ancient Past, and for her extraordinary dedication to the fields of autism research and education.

The Feminist Fete will be hosted by the Institute for Women and Art and held at Rutgers Mason Gross Galleries (33 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901). The Fete will take place from 3-6pm on Sunday, June 3, 2012, and will feature music by Audrey Flack and The History of Art – A bluegrass ensemble featuring the artist and some of her art colleagues with original music and lyrics by Flack poking fun at the art world. The Feminist Fete and exhibition are free and open to the public.

Audrey Flack has also devoted herself to the development of autism services and research.  Flack’s elder daughter, Melissa, is autistic and lives at the Melmark Center’s residential unit in Berwyn, PA, which Flack and her husband helped to establish.  They visit Melissa almost every weekend and Flack’s husband serves as Chair of Melmark’s board. They also support Special Citizens Futures Unlimited (SCFU), Cure Autism Now (CAN, Defeat Autism Now (DAN), National Alliance for Autism Research (NAAR), and the Organization for Autism Research (OAR). Flack requested that the Fete in her honor also be an event to benefit autism services.  In response, the IWA is publishing a limited signed edition of 40 sculptures by Flack. The proceeds will fund the development of early intervention parent support services by the Douglass Developmental Disabilities Center at Rutgers University, and IWA programs to help women artists. Flack has said she would like to support this new program because when Melissa was born there was no support for families with young autistic children.  The sculpture edition consists of a head of an angel created by Flack that will come on a stand with a base.  The price has been set at the low figure of $250 to encourage sales and also because Flack believes that art should be affordable to everyone.

Please contact womenart@rci.rutgers.edu  to RSVP for the Feminist Fete by May 25^th, to purchase one of the Flack sculptures, or to schedule a gallery appointment.

Audrey Flack: Recent Pages from an Ancient Past features a compilation of Flack’s paintings spanning the years from the 1960s through the 1980s.  While Flack’s photo realist paintings are represented in the collections of major museums throughout the world, some of the paintings featured in this exhibit are from private collections and have not been seen before in a public exhibition. Flack, born in New York in 1931, lives and works in New York. When the Museum of Modern Art acquired a painting by Flack, it was the first photorealist work acquired by the museum. Among her public commissions is a monumental gateway to the city of Rock Hill, South Carolina, consisting of four twenty-foot tall bronze figures on granite pedestals. She has taught and lectured extensively.  There are numerous books on her work and Flack is the author of Art and Soul: Notes on Creating (Compass).  Flack delivered the commencement address and received an honorary doctorate at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in May 2012.

This spring at Rutgers, along with the exhibition and celebration of Flack and her work at Mason Gross Galleries, Flack was also named the 2011-2012 Estelle Lebowitz Visiting Artist in Residence for the Mary H. Dana Women Artists Series, a program of the IWA. That residency included multiple lectures and an exhibition featuring her works on paper, Metamorphoses: Pictures by Audrey Flack, which will be on view through June 30, 2012, at the Mabel Smith Douglass Library. For further information visit: iwa.rutgers.edu. An exhibition catalog featuring an essay by Helen Molesworth, Chief Curator at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston, and images from both Rutgers exhibitions will be available for purchase at the Feminist Fete on June 3^rd. Additionally, Flack’s work is on view at the Gary Snyder Gallery, New York through May 19^th in an exhibition titled, Audrey Flack: Sculpture, 1989-2012. This exhibition is the first since 1993 to focus exclusively on Flack’s sculpture and a fully illustrated catalogue will accompany the exhibition with an essay by Arthur C. Danto. For more information visit: garysnyderart.com.

The exhibition Audrey Flack: Recent Pages from an Ancient Past will be on view from May 19 – June 30, 2012, at the Mason Gross Galleries. Gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 10 am – 3pm and weekends by appointment.

These exhibitions and event are made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, and in partnership with Rutgers University Libraries, and the Mason Gross School of the Arts Galleries.

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The Institute for Women and Art (IWA) is committed to bringing high quality educational and cultural opportunities to diverse global, national, regional, state, and university audiences. The IWA is dedicated to affording complete access to all and does not discriminate on the basis of disability in employment, programming or accessing IWA resources. IWA makes every effort to accommodate requests for services in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), as required by Section 35.107 of the U.S. Department of Justice regulations, and to coordinate compliance with Sections 504 and 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Upon request and with due notice, the IWA will attempt to make additional accommodations as needed unless the accommodation would impose an undue hardship.