The Harvard University Art Museums Presents Duo: Oliver Jackson/Marty Ehrlich on View at the Carpenter Center's Sert Gallery August 31

Installation Dedicated to the Late Jazz Great Julius Hemphill

CAMBRIDGE, MA (August 23, 2002)-Six monumental paintings by Oliver Jackson and an hour-long recording of music composed by Marty Ehrlich will be featured in the Sert Gallery at Harvard's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts from August 31, 2002 through January 19, 2003.

Duo: Oliver Jackson/Marty Ehrlich is dedicated to the late jazz saxophonist and composer Julius Hemphill (a friend and colleague of both artists) and represents the most ambitious and extended works Jackson and Ehrlich have executed to date. They collaborated on the work two years ago, when both were in residence in adjoining studios near the Harvard campus. The Fogg Art Museum sponsored Jackson's residency, while Ehrlich was the University's Office for the Arts' 1999-2000 Peter Ivers Visiting Artist.

"We are pleased to be presenting the work of Oliver Jackson and Marty Ehrlich," said James Cuno, Elizabeth and John Moors Cabot director of the Harvard University Art Museums. "Their collaboration was the result of a fruitful residency at Harvard, both for the artists and for the students who met with them."

The collaboration lasted only 10 weeks, but it grew out of discussions and shared experiences dating back to the artists' formative years in St. Louis. It was in the late 1960s that Jackson became a friend and collaborator of Hemphill (1938-1995), a founder and guiding spirit of a St. Louis inner-city arts organization known as the Black Artists Group (BAG). Ehrlich, then a teenager, took classes with BAG members and was inspired to pursue a career in music. Years later, when Ehrlich was a saxophonist in Hemphill's ensemble, he met Jackson, and the two began a long artistic dialogue.

The visual aspect of the exhibition consists of six large, untitled paintings by Jackson (oil on canvas), collectively known as A Garden. Playing in the gallery will be Ehrlich's composition for 22 instruments titled The Long View, which incorporates elements from jazz and classical traditions.

The exhibition was organized by Harry Cooper, associate curator of modern art at the Fogg Art Museum. "My hope is that everyone who enters the gallery will be surprised," said Cooper. "Some will come expecting contemporary installation art; others, a fusion or equation of painting and music; still others, a tribute to Julius Hemphill, the jazz master who inspired both artists. Yet no one will get quite what he or she is looking for."

"Instead, visitors will find two major works created in loose collaboration and intended to be experienced together," Cooper said. "As they listen to some or all of The Long View, look at A Garden, and consider the changing relationship between the two, they will experience a variety of modes of attention, from sharply focused looking and listening to free-floating contemplation, and many states in between. This slowing down and intensifying of the gallery experience is something the Harvard University Art Museums are dedicated to promoting in a wide variety of ways."

For Jackson, the guiding principle of the project was deceptively simple: "People are more profoundly moved by aesthetic experience when it's part of the making of place than when it is in isolation." Ehrlich said: "I began working backwards and forwards in composing the musical images, much as I had observed Oliver paint, moving in a circle around the emerging visual images, his large canvases stretched on the floor."

The musicians heard on The Long View include Ehrlich, Sam Furnace, Ned Rothenberg, Robert DeBellis, J. D. Parran, and Andy Laster (reeds and flutes); Eddie Allen and James Zollar (trumpet); John Clark (French horn); Ray Anderson and Clark Gayton (trombone); Marcus Rojas (tuba); Wayne Horvitz (piano); Mark Dresser and Mark Helias (bass); Mark Feldman (violin); Ralph Farris (viola); Erik Friedlander (cello); and Bobbie Previte, Pheeroan AkLaff, Michael Sarin, and Eddie Bobé (percussion). The music was developed with support from the Office for the Arts at Harvard and the Harvard University Art Museums, and funded in part by the Copying Assistance Program of the American Music Center.

About the Artists
Oliver Jackson (b. 1935), a resident of Oakland, California, is a distinguished painter, printmaker, and sculptor. He has been Professor of Art at California State University in Sacramento since 1971, and has received a National Endowment for the Arts award and a Yaddo fellowship. His work is represented in major museums in New York, Washington D.C., Atlanta, San Francisco, San Diego, and Seattle. Deeply involved with jazz and African culture, his art is also firmly rooted in the traditions of American and European modernism.

Marty Ehrlich (b. 1955), a resident of New York City, was trained at the New England Conservatory of Music and has performed in the ensembles of Anthony Braxton, Andrew Hill, and Julius Hemphill. Since 1975, he has recorded as a leader of several groups, including his Dark Woods Ensemble (cello, bass, clarinet) and his Traveler's Tale Quartet (saxophones, bass, drums). He is an acknowledged pioneer in expanding the language of jazz.

The Harvard University Art Museums
The Harvard University Art Museums are one of the world's leading arts institutions, with the Arthur M. Sackler, Busch-Reisinger, and Fogg art museums, the Straus Center for Conservation, and the U.S. headquarters for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, an excavation project in western Turkey.

The Harvard University Art Museums are distinguished by the range and depth of their collections, their groundbreaking exhibitions, and the original research of their staff. As an integral part of the Harvard community, the three art museums serve as a resource for all students, adding a special dimension to their areas of study. The public is welcome to experience the collections and exhibitions as well as to enjoy lectures, symposia, and other programs.

For more than a century, the Harvard University Art Museums have been the nation's premier training ground for museum professionals and scholars and are renowned for their role in the development of the discipline of art history in this country.

Location and Hours
The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, 24 Quincy Street, is located next to the Fogg and Busch-Reisinger museums at 32 Quincy Street, Cambridge. The Sert Gallery is on the second floor adjoining the Museums' Sert Gallery café. The Arthur M. Sackler Museum is nearby at 485 Broadway. Each Museum is a short walk from the Harvard Square MBTA station.

Hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., Sunday 1 - 5 p.m.; the Museums are closed on national holidays. Admission to the Sert Gallery is free of charge. The Harvard University Art Museums receive support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. More detailed information is available at 617-495-9400 or on the Internet at www.artmuseums.harvard.edu.

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For more information on this project or the Harvard University Art Museums, please contact:

Matthew Barone
Harvard University Art Museums
tel 617-495-2397; fax 617-496-9762
mbarone@fas.harvard.edu

or

Kim Gilbert/Allison Derusha
Resnicow Schroeder Associates
tel 212-671-5157; fax 212-595-8354
kgilbert@resnicowschroeder.com
aderusha@resnicowschroeder.com