Davenport, Iowa (September 24, 2013) - The Day of the Dead: Celebrating Community, Family and the Immortal Spirit is a new exhibition that will be opening at the Figge Art Museum on Thursday. The installation celebrates the traditions of the November holiday in which the living remember their departed loved ones.

The exhibition will feature more than two dozen larger-than-life Catrina dolls from Casa Guanajuato Quad Cities and multiple ofrendas (altars) from community members including The Humane Society of Scott County, The Project of the Quad Cities and Scott Community College SEED Program.

The ofrendas on display honor the deceased and will be decorated with traditional items such as sugar skulls, flowers, candles and images.  Guests will be invited to make paper flowers and butterflies, leaves and paw prints to leave in remembrance.

The public is invited to the free "Cocktails with Catrinas" kickoff event on Thursday from 5-8 p.m. in the Grand Lobby, where attendees will mingle among Catrinas while enjoying music, free snacks, salsa dancing and specialty cocktails.

The Day of the Dead exhibition will be on view through November 3 and is sponsored by the Brand Boeshaar Foundation Fund.

 

Companion Events:
Cocktails with Catrinas

5-8 p.m. Thursday, September 26

Celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month and the exhibition at this event featuring food, music and salsa dancing among the larger-than-life Catrinas from Casa Guanajuato. Free!

Esperanza Forum & Luncheon

11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. Friday, October 4

Learn about the state of Latino affairs in Illinois from Sylvia Puente, Executive Director of the Latino Policy Forum. The forum will be followed by a Q&A session. Free, but please RSVP for lunch count at 309-756-9978 or http://web.extension.illinois.edu/hmrs.

 

Free Family Fiesta Day

10 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday, November 2
Celebrate El Dia de los Muertos at the Figge! Families will enjoy making a variety of projects including skeleton masks, clay figures, and learn to make and decorate traditional sugar skulls. Special snacks, music, story time and a film will also be on the schedule along with gallery activities. Ballet Folklorico will cap off the scheduled activities with their performance of traditional dance in the Grand Lobby.

Día de los Muertos 5K Race/Walk

9 a.m. Saturday, November 2
A partnership with Casa Guanajuato Quad Cities

Celebrate El Dia de los Muertos and Halloween by dressing up for this family-friendly run/walk on the Dav­en­port River­walk (Rip­ley St. at Bieder­beck Dr.). To register visit www.casaqc.org.

About the Figge Art Museum

The Figge Art Museum is located on the riverfront in downtown Davenport at 225 West Second Street. Hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday and Sundays 12-5 p.m. Thursdays the museum is open until 9 p.m. Admission to the museum and tour is $7. Admission is free to Figge members and institutional members and free to all on Thursday evenings from 5 p.m. - 9 p.m.. To contact the museum, please call 563.326.7804, or visit www.figgeartmuseum.org.

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Davenport, Iowa (August 20, 2013) - Beginning Saturday a new exhibition will open at the Figge Art Museum. Colony: Figge is being presented in collaboration with the FLUX Foundation, a non-profit organization that encourages people to design and build large-scale public art as a catalyst for education.

Colony: Figge invites members and guests to design and create their own SNAPS (socially networked art panels) while interacting with each other to build a new Colony at the Figge. The SNAPS will be mixed and remixed and a structure will form that escapes the predictable. Supplies will be provided and the activity is free with membership or paid admission.

Colony began as an interactive, collaborative project of the FLUX Foundation sponsored by The Museum Group (TMG). Its first iteration was created at the 2012 American Alliance of Museums annual meeting in Minneapolis, MN, with 5,000 conference participants. TMG nominated the FLUX Foundation as their annual Thought Leader for the conference, inviting FLUX to present at the meeting and build an interactive, collaborative space of creation on site at the conference.

The Figge is always looking for fresh ways to engage visitors and encourage participation and Colony: Figge does just that. The Quad Cities community is the first of hopefully many "settlements" and a way to accomplish the FLUX Foundation's mission statement: Building art through community. Building community through art.

This exhibition will be on display August 24-September 19, 2013.

About the FLUX Foundation
The FLUX Foundation is a nonprofit organization based in Oakland, California. Their mission is to engage people in designing and building large-scale public art as a catalyst for education, collaboration and empowerment. FLUX exists as a new model for the exploration and creation of art. As a volunteer-based organization, they apply collaboration, engagement, community, and technology to the production and experience of artworks. Their work is about the transformation of the spectator into the participant. They believe anyone can be an artist and build big art.

About the Figge Art Museum

The Figge Art Museum is located on the riverfront in downtown Davenport at 225 West Second Street. Hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday and Sundays 12-5 p.m. Thursdays the museum is open until 9 p.m. Admission to the museum and tour is $7. Admission is free to Figge members and institutional members and free to all on Thursday evenings from 5 p.m. - 9 p.m.. To contact the museum, please call 563.326.7804, or visit www.figgeartmuseum.org.

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Davenport, Iowa (June 17, 2013) -  Beginning Wednesday on the first floor of the Parker Building in downtown Davenport, Chicago-based artist Juan Angel Chavez will be constructing a web-like structure made from items collected in the Quad Cities and Chicago. The finished product will be on view for the upcoming Figge Art Museum exhibition No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service which opens June 29.

 

Pedestrians will be able to watch Chavez in action at the corner of Brady and Second Street as he constructs the sculpture daily through June 24.

 

Chavez works with salvaged wood and other discarded materials to create dynamic, sculptural assemblages that celebrate the intrinsic value of ordinary, and seemingly banal, objects. The tears, stains, abrasions and other imperfections that mark the surface of the material he collects provide a lasting record of an object's complex history.

 

For No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service the installation will take the form of a web-like structure reminiscent of the temporary shelters that animals (and humans) construct for their survival. In his use of refuse and other found objects, Chavez seeks to draw attention to socially deviant behavior and other "unwanted" activities.

Born in La Junta, Chihuahua, Mexico, Chavez immigrated to the United States when he was thirteen. He attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago's Early College Program and continued his studies at The School, where he currently holds a faculty position in the sculpture department. He has exhibited in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art, The Mexican Fine Art Center Museum, and the Hyde Park Art Center. Chavez has been the recipient of numerous awards including the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation award, the Louis Comfort Tiffany award, Artadia Individual artist award and 3Arts award.

No Shoes, No Shirt, No Service will be on display June 29-October 6, 2013.

Companion Programming 

Opening Reception and Gallery Talk

5:30 pm Friday, June 28

Exclusive event for museum members and donors.

Tours

1:30 p.m. Sundays in July and Saturdays in August

 

Meet the Artist

12-4 p.m. Saturday, September 21

College students will take part in an invitation-only lunch followed by a 2 pm public lecture by Juan Angel Chavez.

About the Figge Art Museum

The Figge Art Museum is located on the riverfront in downtown Davenport at 225 West Second Street. Hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday and Sundays 12-5 p.m. Thursdays the museum is open until 9 p.m. Admission to the museum and tour is $7. Admission is free to Figge members and institutional members and free to all on Thursday evenings from 5 p.m. - 9 p.m.. To contact the museum, please call 563.326.7804, or visit www.figgeartmuseum.org.

Davenport, Iowa (May 30, 2013) - Questionable Architecture: Terry Rathje in Collaboration with Steve Banks and Monica Correia is the latest exhibition to open at the Figge Art Museum. The exhibition will be on view in the Figge's fourth floor gallery starting this Saturday June 1 and will be on view through August 25.

This multi-structure sculptural installation is the inspiration of Quad Cities artist and assistant professor of graphic design at Western Illinois University, Terry Rathje, who conceived of this "Village in the Figge" with the collaboration of designer Monica Correia and artist Steve Banks.  The installation explores the interaction of function and form in multiple structures designed digitally or scratch built by hand. Inspired by stupas, pagodas, ziggurats and roadside shrines, these structures are a mix of sculpture and architecture whose fanciful and imaginative designs have a visual impact completely unrelated to their use.

The show will include movable structures made of repurposed materials as well as a unique structure designed by computer and assembled onsite that visitors will be invited to enter. "After several years of building separate structures such as these which reference vernacular architecture, it was natural to imagine what many of them together might look like as a portable village, one that might pick up and move to a new location if conditions warranted," said Rathje.

The opening reception for this exhibition will be held at the museum beginning at 5:30 pm on Friday and is free with membership or paid admission.

About the Artists

Terry Rathje received his MFA in 3D Design from the University of Iowa, and has created site-specific sculptures in many venues throughout the region, in addition to exhibiting his constructions and assemblage pieces. Monica Correia is Associate Professor of Design at the University of Iowa. A native of Brazil, she has extensive experience as a designer in Brazil and in the U.S. Quad Cities artist Steve Banks, a graduate of Florida State University, creates multi-media works that combine sculptural and painted elements.

 

About the Figge Art Museum

The Figge Art Museum is located on the riverfront in downtown Davenport at 225 West Second Street. Hours are from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday and Sundays 12-5 p.m. Thursdays the museum is open until 9 p.m. Admission to the museum and tour is $7. Admission is free to Figge members and institutional members and free to all on Thursday evenings from 5 p.m. - 9 p.m.. To contact the museum, please call 563.326.7804, or visit www.figgeartmuseum.org.

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