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Red Luster:
Lacquer and Leatherworks of Asia

Opening September 15
For the past two thousand years—far before the development of plastic laminations and modern-day adhesives—lacquer was (and remains) a superior material. Red Luster: Lacquer and Leatherworks of Asia demonstrates the aesthetic impact of red lacquer and its faux imitators in leatherworks and other materials. The glossy sheen, slick texture and deep colors of lacquer have long been a prized material throughout Asia but the materials to create "true lacquers" do not exist in all of Asia.

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BLACKOUT
A Centennial Commission by
Paul Henry Ramirez

through October 3, 2010
This site-specific installation allows viewers to experience painting as an environment that one can enter.  Using the Museum's Charles Engelhard Court as his canvas, Ramirez employs his signature curvaceous biomorphic forms amidst a profusion of pop-inspired colors in dialogue withe the Court's distinctive Beaux-Arts architecture. 

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Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s-50s

through May 23, 2010
Constructive Spirit investigates the formative geometric abstract art movements of Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela.  This exhibition is the first to explore the conceptual connections and exchanges that existed between artists in the Americas.  Featured are more than 90 paintings, sculptures, prints, photographs, drawings and films. 

Constructive Spirit Teen Podcast

Constructive Spirit Teen Audio Tour This teen audio tour was created for Constructive Spirit: Abstract Art in South and North America, 1920s-50s, an exhibition that considers the shared interest in geometric abstraction that linked artists from Argentina, Brazil, the United States, Uruguay and Venezuela. The result of a collaboration between the Newark Museum and the Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, this podcast brings a teen’s perspective to eight works included in Constructive Spirit. In the summer of 2009, curators and educators from both institutions brought together four high-school interns to research and interpret works in the exhibition.

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100 Masterpieces of Art Pottery, 1880-1930

September 23, 2009 through January 10, 2010

Artistic ceramics is not a new idea.  After all, the finest decorated pottery in ancienct Greece was both functional and artistic.  The potteries in Renaissance Italy produced brilliant painterly vessels that were appreciated as art.  Likewise, it is hard to dismiss the brilliant enamel painting on European porcelains in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as only "decoration."  However, something did happen in the third quarter of the nineteenth century.  Part of it was the rise of an anti-industrial reaction to "soulless" factory production; part of it was a growing awareness in the West of revered ceramic traditions from Asia.

All of this came together, in the United States at least, at the national Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia in 1876.  That moment was a cultural watershed for America, a moment that unleashed something of an aesthetic awakening.  It was in the aftermath of the Centennial that Americans began to see the potential for transforming ceramics from merely ornaments into art objects.  In shape, in glaze, in surface treatment, pots could be more than just pots.

100 Masterpieces
of Art Pottery, 1880-1930

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN POTS BECAME ART?

Featuring the Newark Museum’s internationally renowned collection, this exhibit highlights 100 pieces  of porcelain and pottery from around the world, demonstrating the evolution of the art of pottery from the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties.

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New Work: Newark in 3D -
A Centennial Film Commission by Marylou Tibaldo-Bongiorno and Jerome Bongiorno

September 22, 2009 through January 10, 2010

These award-winning, Newark-based filmmakers will create a black-and-white, 3D film about present day Newark that is a homage to the 1920 avant-garde film Manhatta which documents a day in the life of Manhattan and which plays on continuous loop in the Museum's American art galleries.  In New Work, the Bongiornos will capture the hidden beauty and dignity of Newark from sunrise to sunset, from its river entry, trains, business districts, work sites, cemeteries, smoke stacks, port and transit hubs.

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Party Time: Re-imagine America

A Centennial Commission by
Yinka Shonibare MBE

through January 2010

Internationally celebrated artist Yinka Shonibare MBE creates one of his most ambitious sculptural installations to date, a site-specific sculptural installation commissioned by the Newark Museum and set in the historic Ballantine House.  The artist recreates a formal dinner party as it could have happened (but likely would not have) during the late 19th century.  With the rise of wealth and the quest for refinement that accompanied industrialization, elaborate dinner parties replace the bare-minimum meal, becoming a celebratory “eating fest” for the social and economic ruling class.

100 Amazing Objects

Red Tour – Amazing looking

Explores works that dazzle the eye and excite the imagination. The art and science objects were selected for their maximum "wow" factor. Some are big, some are not so big, but all of them are eye-filling feasts of form, pattern, color, line and texture. This tour is particularly recommended for family groups with children.

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100 Amazing Objects

Green Tour – Amazing story

While the features in these objects may be beautiful, it is the stories behind them that is the focus in the green tour, Amazing stories. Where did they come from? What do they mean? How did they end up here? These are just some of the questions that will be answered along the journey.

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100 Amazing Objects

Blue Tour – Amazing importance
 

Especially fitting for the connoisseur and museum maven. Objects selected for this tour represent the best or the rarest of the most unusual examples of their kind. The Newark Museum's vast holdings are full of masterworks, both natural and manmade, and this will be a chance to understand what makes some of them as important as national treasures.

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Skies Alive! Bird Migration
in the Garden State

through April 2010
Skies Alive focuses on New Jersey's role in bird migration.  The interactive exhibit illustrates the uniqueness of the state's diverse environments and the importance of preserving its natural resources to ensure the survival of these transient birds  

Dreyfuss Planetarium:
This Month's Issue: Highlights of the
New Jersey Skies

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Objects Of Desire:
500 Years of Jewelry

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