Usually, the art world focuses on openings to celebrate shows. The opening night is when you dress up, clink glasses, and people-watch the who’s-who of gallery glitterati. But for Beate Kuhn: Turn, the Carnegie Museum of Art is hosting a special closing event, Scoring the Works of Beate Kuhn, on December 1 to celebrate the run of what was by all accounts a hugely successful exhibition.
Turn was the first American solo show for Beate Kuhn, the late German sculptor and ceramicist with a storied career. Kuhn’s ceramic sculptures make undulating shapes that are both alien and comforting. In many cases, her use of repeated forms suggest the ability of “the many” to collaborate as a coherent whole, making this a subtly profound show to see during election season.
Turn placed the sculptures in Gallery 1 of the museum—a side space from the Scaife Galleries where the permanent collection is, right when you walk in the door—turning what’s often a small side gallery into a main event.
The Carnegie leaned into interdisciplinary programming for Turn, with a playlist to accompany the work, video footage of Kuhn’s studio, and essays discussing the ways her portfolio straddles the line between sculpture and ceramic. For the closing event, a concert, the museum tapped a pianist, two improvisational musicians, and ceramic instruments to bring Kuhn’s work further to life.
“Scoring Beate Kuhn” to Celebrate Connection Between Music and Art
“At Carnegie Museum of Art, we were inspired by an online eulogy for Beate Kuhn which lamented that no musicians had ‘yet dared to transform what in many respects are the score-like qualities of [Kuhn’s sculptures] into sound in compelling improvisations,’” Rachel Delphia, Alan G. and Jane A. Lehman Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, told TABLE.
“Our team saw an opportunity to do just that by commissioning new music to share with our visitors in Pittsburgh,” Delphia continued. “We invited pianist Marina López in part to honor Kuhn’s pianist mother Lisa Kuhn-Zoll; David Bernabo and Trē Seguritan Abalos who offer an improvisational style that included sampling ambient sound and field recordings, reminiscent of Kuhn’s beloved Musique Concrete; and finally, SONIC MUD presents the chance to hear ceramic instruments. It is a thrilling and eclectic mix that will beautifully complement Kuhn’s sculpture.”
Honoring Kuhn’s Legacy through Music
David Bernabo, a musician, documentarian, and artist performing in the closing, found Kuhn’s work was a natural match for experimental music. “In composing a piece inspired by Beate Kuhn’s sculptures, Trē and I were drawn to the cyclical nature of some of the pieces, and also the rich textures of the work. Both of those aspects felt translatable to music,” he said. That “cyclical nature” comes through in the repeating shapes and motifs in the ceramics and Kuhn’s use of circles, plus the title Turn, which captures the scope of the full-career retrospective for Kuhn.
“We jointly composed our piece with flutes and pitched percussion, and then built the structure on modular units of rhythmic or harmonic ideas that we can loop, displace, or improvise through,” Bernabo said. He plays percussion, while Abalos is a flutist who performs experimental flute music in the duo Glo-Tree in addition to as a soloist. “It’s a very practical structure that should result in an organic unfolding of breathy sounds, melodies, rich tones, and other earthy textures,” Bernabo said.
Scoring the Works of Beate Kuhn is free with museum admission and will take place from 1PM-3PM in the Scaife Lounge of the museum, just outside the entrance of Kuhn’s show.
Story by Emma Riva / Photo courtesy of Carnegie Museum of Art
Subscribe to TABLE Magazine’s print edition.
