New fiber art works in space named for Schiff-Bresler Family
The Mint Museum is pleased to announce a new named space in the Craft & Design Galleries at Mint Museum Uptown. Through the generosity of the Bresler Family Foundation, the Schiff-Bresler Family Fiber Art Gallery was inaugurated in recent weeks with a stunning installation including five new acquisitions in honor of Fleur Bresler, an initiative of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design Board of Directors. A longtime craft supporter, collector, quilt maker, donor, and friend of the Mint, Fleur and her late husband Charles Bresler gifted thirty-six historic American quilts to the Mint in 2001 and 2002. Fleur Bresler also donated a rare iconic Etruscan Chair by Danny Lane to the Mint in 2011.
As part of the Mint’s ongoing “Year of the Woman,” the museum is celebrating Fleur Bresler for all she has done to advance craft in this country, for her dedication to artists, at all stages of their careers, and for true philanthropy, raising the bar high, and leading by example. The “Year of the Woman” began in summer 2016 with the celebration of the museum’s 80th anniversary as an institution founded by women, led by women, and known for pioneering exhibitions of work by women artists.
Five of the new acquisitions demonstrate the museum’s collection development in Craft + Design to focus on 21st-century innovative international works. Highlights of the inaugural installation include Impala, a free standing sculpture by Anne Lemanski, designed and created in Charlotte during Lemanski’s residency at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation earlier this year and purchased by the Bresler Family expressly for the fiber art initiative. Wall mounted fiber art includes Chance of Flurries 2011, by another North Carolina-based artist, Nava Lubelski; Dream Year: 2015 by Mi-Kyoung Lee; Wall Hanging 3 2015, by Tanya Aguiñiga; and in between sculpture and wall hanging, displayed in a gigantic light box, Quilt Film Quilt 2015 by Sabrina Gschwandtner.
The inaugural installation also features a newly acquired furnishing panel designed by Anni Albers for Knoll, Eclat 1974, and a lace composition Fragments of My Dreams 3 1980, by fiber art pioneer Luba Krejci. Punctuating the new accessions are John Garrett’s Tales Told on a Sunday Afternoon Between Los Cordovas and the Pilar Landslide 1997, Claire Zeisler’s Blue Vision 1981, Ramona Sakiestewa’s Migration/9 2000, and the Project Ten Ten Ten installation Urban Color Palette, Charlotte 2010, by Hildur Bjarnadóttir.
The works are expected to remain on view through October 2017 in the Level 3 galleries, which are accessible FREE each Wednesday evening from 5-9 p.m. and available via general admission during the remainder of regular operating hours.