Experiencing ‘This Place’

Jungjin Lee’s “Unnamed Road” is on display at the University Art Museum. Lee will be speaking at the museum on Feb. 6.

“Field Trip, Israel” by Martin Kollar is also part of the exhibit “This Place.”

ALBANY, N.Y. (Feb. 1, 2018) – “This Place,” a photography exhibition that explores the rifts and paradoxes of the highly contested spaces of Israel and the West Bank, opens today at the University Art Museum.

Visitors can see works by internationally renowned artists Martin Kollar, Jungjin Lee, Thomas Struth and Jeff Wall, through April 7.

The pieces at UAlbany are part of the traveling exhibit of “This Place,” which is being presented as a collaboration among four academic museums: the Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University, the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College, and the University at Albany Art Museum.

Together, the four museums are showing the work of 12 international artists who were invited to explore Israel and the West Bank. The presentation is part of a three-year project entitled “Teaching and Learning with Museum Exhibitions: An Inter-Institutional Approach” supported by the Teagle Foundation, in which faculty and students are engaged cross-institutionally with the exhibition over several semesters, culminating in a national public symposium in 2018.

At UAlbany, 18 faculty members will be incorporating projects related to the exhibition into their spring semester courses.

“This Place” at the Museum includes a designated space with seating and interactive materials designed to function as a site for dialogue, conversational exchange and extended classroom learning. Twenty faculty members are incorporating projects related to the exhibition into their spring semester courses.

The exhibition will include a number of public programs. The first is a lecture by exhibiting artist Jungjin Lee at 7 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 6, in the Museum.

Known for her laborious work printed on handmade mulberry paper, Lee creates cross-cultural photographic landscapes that intermix techniques and materials of Eastern and Western traditions of both painting and photography. For “This Place,” Lee traveled to Israel and the West Bank four times during 2010 and 2011, usually staying for about a month. She focused on the desert regions in the south, particularly the landscape of the Negev.

Her talk is co-sponsored by UAlbany’s Department of Art and Art History.

On March 7, Frédéric Brenner, the French artist who conceived of and launched “This Place,” will be interviewed on campus as part of “The Creative Life,” WAMC’s conversation series hosted by Joe Donahue and co-sponsored by the University Art Museum, UAlbany Performing Arts Center, and The New York State Writers Institute.

Brenner is best known for his opus Diaspora, the result of a 25-year search in over 40 countries to create a visual record of the Jewish Diaspora at the end of the 20th century.

The University Art Museum is open Tuesday, 10 a.m.-7 p.m.; Wednesday through Friday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; and Saturday, noon-4 p.m. All events are free and open to the public. For more information, visit the Museum’s website.

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