Dennis Barrie

Last updated

Dennis Barrie (born 1947) is a museum director responsible for the curation of American pop culture. He was the Director of the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center from 1983-1992. In 1990 Barrie and the gallery were indicted on obscenity charges stemming from exhibiting sadomasochistic photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe as part of an exhibit entitled The Perfect Moment . [1] This was the first criminal trial of an art museum over the contents of an exhibition. At trial, a Cincinnati jury acquitted Barrie and the Center. The controversy was later chronicled in a TV movie titled Dirty Pictures.

Barrie went on to become a co-creator of Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where he served as an executive director from 1993-1998. [2]

From 1998 to 2005 Barrie served as president of the Malrite Company where he oversaw the opening of the International Spy Museum, in Washington DC.

Related Research Articles

Judith Ann Reisman was an American conservative author, best known for her criticism and condemnation of the work and legacy of Alfred Kinsey. She has been referred to as the "founder of the modern anti-Kinsey movement". Her commentary was featured by the conservative WorldNetDaily and the Christian magazine Salvo. She held a Ph.D. in communications from Case Western Reserve University, and was a visiting professor of law at Liberty University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National Endowment for the Arts</span> Independent agency of the United States federal government

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government by an act of the U.S. Congress, signed by President Lyndon B. Johnson on September 29, 1965. It is a sub-agency of the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities, along with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Mapplethorpe</span> American photographer (1946–1989)

Robert Michael Mapplethorpe was an American photographer, best known for his black-and-white photographs. His work featured an array of subjects, including celebrity portraits, male and female nudes, self-portraits, and still-life images. His most controversial works documented and examined the gay male BDSM subculture of New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s. A 1989 exhibition of Mapplethorpe's work, titled Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment, sparked a debate in the United States concerning both use of public funds for "obscene" artwork and the Constitutional limits of free speech in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corcoran Gallery of Art</span> United States historic place

The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johnnetta Cole</span> American anthropologist

Johnnetta Betsch Cole is an American anthropologist, educator, museum director, and college president. Cole was the first female African-American president of Spelman College, a historically black college, serving from 1987 to 1997. She was president of Bennett College from 2002 to 2007. During 2009–2017 she was Director of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of African Art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Hunt (sculptor)</span> American artist and sculptor

Richard Howard Hunt is a sculptor. In the second half of the 20th century, he became "the foremost African-American abstract sculptor and artist of public sculpture." Hunt, the descendant of enslaved people brought through the port of Savannah from West Africa, studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the 1950s, and while there received multiple prizes for his work. He was the first African American sculptor to have a retrospective at Museum of Modern Art in 1971. Hunt has created over 160 public sculpture commissions in prominent locations in 24 states across the United States, more than any other sculptor.

Eighth Blackbird is an American contemporary music sextet based in Chicago, composed of flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, and cello. Their name derives from the eighth stanza of Wallace Stevens' poem Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.

Lawrence "Larry" Zox was an American painter and printmaker who is classified as an Abstract expressionist, Color Field painter and a Lyrical Abstractionist, although he did not readily use those categories for his work.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Contemporary Arts Center</span>

The Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) is a contemporary art museum in Cincinnati, Ohio and one of the first contemporary art institutions in the United States. The CAC is a non-collecting museum that focuses on new developments in painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, performance art and new media. Focusing on programming that reflects "the art of the last five minutes", the CAC has displayed the works of many now-famous artists early in their careers, including Andy Warhol. In 2003, the CAC moved to a new building designed by the late Zaha Hadid.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Intermuseum Conservation Association</span>

The Intermuseum Conservation Association is the oldest non-profit art conservation center in the United States, currently located in Cleveland, OH. The ICA offers conservation and preservation treatments for paintings, murals, works on paper, documents, objects of all media, outdoor sculpture, monuments, and textiles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katonah Museum of Art</span> Visual arts museum in Katonah, New York

The Katonah Museum of Art is a non-collecting institution geared towards visual arts, located in Katonah, New York. It does not have a permanent collection, but holds temporary exhibitions.

<i>Dirty Pictures</i> 2000 TV film directed by Frank Pierson

Dirty Pictures is a 2000 American docudrama directed by Frank Pierson. The teleplay by Ilene Chaiken focuses on the 1990 trial of Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center director Dennis Barrie, who was accused of promoting pornography by presenting an exhibit of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe that included images of naked children and graphic displays of homosexual sadomasochism.

Lowell Blair Nesbitt was an American painter, draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor. He served as the official artist for the NASA Apollo 9, and Apollo 13 space missions; in 1976 the United States Navy commissioned him to paint a mural in the administration building on Treasure Island spanning 26 feet x 251 feet, then the largest mural in the United States; and in 1980 the United States Postal Service honored Lowell Nesbitt by issuing four postage stamps depicting his paintings.

Washington Project for the Arts, founded in 1975, is a non-profit organization dedicated to the support and aid of artists in the Washington, D.C. area.

Samuel Jones Wagstaff Jr. was an American art curator and collector as well as the artistic mentor and benefactor of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and poet-punk rocker Patti Smith. Wagstaff is known in part for his support of minimalism, pop art, conceptual art and earthworks, but his aesthetic acceptance and support of photography presaged the acceptance of the medium as a fine art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Gefter</span> American author and photography critic

Philip Gefter is an American author and photography historian. His books include What Becomes A Legend Most, the biography of Richard Avedon; and Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe, the biography of Sam Wagstaff, for which he received the 2014 Marfield Prize, the national award for arts writing. He is also the author of George Dureau: The Photographs, and Photography After Frank, a book of essays published by Aperture in 2009. He was on staff at The New York Times for over fifteen years, where he wrote regularly about photography. He produced the 2011 documentary film, Bill Cunningham New York.

William J. Chiego is an American museum curator, who has been director of the McNay Art Museum in San Antonio since 1991.

David C. Levy is an educator, museum director, art historian, designer/photographer, and musician. In his current role as President of the Education Division of Cambridge Information Group, Levy is also President of Sotheby's Institute of Art and Chairman of Bach to Rock. He was President and Director of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC, from 1991 to 2005, and Chancellor of The New School for Social Research in New York City from 1989 to 1991. From 1970 to 1989 Levy was Executive Dean and CEO of Parsons School of Design. He holds a bachelor's degree from Columbia College, Columbia University and a master's degree and PhD from New York University.

Fine art nude photography is a genre of fine-art photography which depicts the nude human body with an emphasis on form, composition, emotional content, and other aesthetic qualities. The nude has been a prominent subject of photography since its invention, and played an important role in establishing photography as a fine art medium. The distinction between fine art photography and other subgenres is not absolute, but there are certain defining characteristics.

The Perfect Moment was the most comprehensive retrospective of works by New York photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. The show spanned twenty-five years of his career, featuring celebrity portraits, self-portraits, interracial figure studies, floral still lifes, homoerotic images, and collages. The exhibition, organized by Janet Kardon of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Philadelphia, opened in the winter of 1988 just months before Mapplethorpe's death from AIDS complications on March 9, 1989. On tour, in the summer of 1989, the exhibition became the centerpiece of a controversy concerning federal funding of the arts and censorship.

References

  1. "Mapplethorpe battle changed art world". Enquirer.com. 2000-05-21. Retrieved 2013-06-09.
  2. Tom NugentPhotos by Gary Yasaki. "Oberlin Alumni Magazine - Fall 2003". Oberlin.edu. Retrieved 2013-06-09.