Kemper Art Museum wins $50,000 grant from Andy Warhol Foundation

Grant to support *Sharon Lockhart—Lunch Break*

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis has received a $50,000 grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc., to support the exhibition Sharon Lockhart—Lunch Break. Organized by Sabine Eckmann, Ph.D., the museum’s director and chief curator, the exhibition will open Feb. 10, 2010, and remain on view through April 19.

Established in 1987, the Warhol Foundation aims to foster innovative artistic expression and the creative process by encouraging and supporting cultural organizations that in turn, directly or indirectly, support artists and their work. The foundation is focused primarily on supporting work of a challenging and often experimental nature, as well as curatorial research leading to new scholarship in the field of contemporary art.

Sharon Lockhart, still from *LUNCH BREAK (Assembly Hall, Bath Iron Works, Bath, Maine),* 2008. 35mm film transferred to HD. Edition of six, with two artists proofs. 80 min. Courtesy of the artist.

Sharon Lockhart is a conceptual artist known for exploring the relationship between film and still photography. In Lunch Break, Lockhart observes the daily routines of workers at the Bath Iron Works, a major shipyard and U.S. Navy supplier located in Bath, Maine. The exhibition will include two filmic installations, LUNCH BREAK and EXIT, in which slow-moving and static cameras subtly capture worker’s rhythms and movements as they take their breaks, socialize or leave for the day. Three related series of photographs — focusing on the workers’ lunch boxes, group portraits and independent vendors working within the shipyard — exhibit cinematic qualities of staging and casting while simultaneously revealing a quiet humanism.

Warhol Foundation Grants are made on a project basis to curatorial programs at museums, artists’ organizations and other cultural institutions to originate innovative and scholarly presentations of contemporary visual arts. Projects may include exhibitions, catalogues and other organizational activities directly related to these areas. The program also supports the creation of new work through re-granting initiatives and artist-in-residence programs.

The grant to the Kemper Art Museum was one of 46 awarded so far this year and one of only two awards to Missouri institutions. The Charlotte Street Foundation City received a three-year, $150,000 grant for its Urban Culture Project, which provides free studios to artists in downtown Kansas City. The Kemper Art Museum previously received Warhol Foundation funding for the exhibition Reality Bites: Making Avant-garde Art in Post-Wall Germany, which debuted in 2007.

MILDRED LANE KEMPER ART MUSEUM

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, part of Washington University’s Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, is committed to furthering critical thinking and visual literacy through a vital program of exhibitions, publications and accompanying events. The museum dates back to 1881, making it the oldest art museum west of the Mississippi River. Today it boasts one of the finest university collections in the United States.

Editor’s Note: High-res images available upon request.