ROSE ART MUSEUM’S SAM HUNTER EMERGING ARTISTS FUND COMMITTEE SELECTS TWO WORKS BY B. INGRID OLSON TO ENTER THE COLLECTION

The Rose Art Museum has announced that work by B. Ingrid Olson has been selected for acquisition by the Sam Hunter Emerging Artists Acquisition Fund Committee. Inspired by the legacy of the Rose’s founding director, Sam Hunter, the ​fund is generated annually and administered by a committee that aims to collect the work of promising artists on the cusp of recognition. Two works by Chicago-based Olson–Arched fold, bent of another movement, 2017 and Firing distance, scission, 2017–have been acquired for the Rose Art Museum’s collection.

Straddling sculpture and photography, Olson’s work plays fascinating games with perception and vision.  Olson was recently featured in a two-person exhibition at The Renaissance Society in Chicago, and her first solo museum show will open at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in March 2018.  Her work will also be included in Being: New Photography 2018, at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (March 2018) and in a group show at the MCA Chicago, Picture Fiction: Kenneth Josephson and Contemporary Photography (April 28–December 30, 2018).

“Ingrid is an extraordinary photographer, pushing the bounds of the medium while engaging with pressing issues of gender identity and representation,” say Leslie Aronzon, a member of this year’s committee. “Her work fits in well with the Rose collection, and we are so excited to add her impressive and fresh works to our permanent collection.” Joining Aronzon on this year’s committee are Kim Allen-Niesen, Steven Bunson, Tory Fair, Betsy Pfau, and Lisa Wyett.

Olson has said of her practice, “Whether a photograph or sculptural, I would say much of my work questions the idea of being in a body in space. Concepts of embodiment, proprioception–the sense of oneself as a body moving in the world in relation to other things–gender, sexuality, as well as dynamics such as universality versus specificity, or inside versus outside, are all circulating around in my mind as I make the work.”

The Sam Hunter Emerging Artists Fund is named after the Rose Art Museum’s founding director, whose keen insights and guiding principles continue to influence the path of the museum. In 1962, a $50,000 gift from Leon Mnuchin and Harriet Gevirtz-Mnuchin allowed Hunter to make a series of astute collecting decisions, acquiring works by rising figures in the art world—Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Jim Dine, Ellsworth Kelly, and Marisol, among others—with a spending cap of $5,000 per object. Just as Brandeis established its academic reputation with incredible rapidity, Hunter ensured the same happened to the Rose through the acquisitions he made and the exhibitions he organized, and the status Rose enjoys today is in large part due to his vision in the 1960s. 

The Fund continues a legacy of smart and adventurous collecting. In this spirit, an acquisition committee comprised of collectors, contemporary curators, and practicing artists aims to select a work to add to the museum’s collection. The committee is tasked with identifying and exploring the work of promising artists who have the potential to become as great as the once “emerging artists” whose work sits at the heart of the Rose’s collection. The group operates with a spending cap, a limitation that encourages the acquisition of work by rising artists in the field. Committee members, each contributing funds to a collective pot, meet monthly to discuss work by artists of interest, and eventually select an artist who they believe to be the most promising of the group, and the best fit for the Rose collection. Previous acquisitions by the committee include work by artists David Schutter and Claire Anna Baker.

ABOUT B. INGRID OLSON

Ingrid Olson was born in 1987 in Denver, Colorado. She currently lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include KLEIN/OLSON, The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2017); double-ended arrow, Simone Subal Gallery, New York (2015);The vases my monitors their frames,cura.basement, Rome, (2014); and From her come a gang and a run, Document, Chicago (2014). Select group exhibitions include: The problem with having a body / is that it always needs to be somewhere, The Approach, London (2017); Scarlet Street, Lucien Terras, New York (2016); Background/Foreground, Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm (2016); Synecdoche, Jessica Silverman Gallery, San Francisco (2015); Dreams That Money Can’t Buy, MAXXI Museo delle Arti del XXI secolo, Rome (2014) and We seem to still be moving, Simone Subal Gallery, New York, NY (2013). 

ABOUT THE ROSE ART MUSEUM AT BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY

Founded in 1961, The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University is among the nation’s premier university museums dedicated to collecting, preserving, exhibiting, and interpreting modern and contemporary art. A center of cultural and intellectual life on campus, the Museum serves as a catalyst for the exchange of ideas: a place of discovery, intersection, and dialogue at the university and within the Greater Boston community.  Through its collection, exhibitions, and programs, the Rose works to affirm and advance the values of social justice, freedom of expression, global diversity, and academic excellence that are hallmarks of Brandeis University. Postwar American and international contemporary art are particularly well represented within the Rose’s renowned permanent collection of more than 9,000 objects. 

Located on Brandeis University’s campus at 415 South Street, Waltham, MA, the museum is free and open to the public Wednesday through Sunday, 11 AM – 5 PM. 

For more information, visit www.brandeis.edu/rose or call 781-736-3434.