You Picked It
Top 10 at 10: Your RAM Favorites
In celebration of RAM's 10th anniversary, Racine Art Museum is dedicating 2013 to acknowledging the importance of the local community in building, maintaining, and growing an institution. To honor these connections, RAM encouraged the public to vote on which collection piece they found most inspiring or interesting. Over the summer, multiple gallery spaces within the museum were filled with over 100 works from the collection. The voting results formed the basis for Top 10 at 10: Your RAM Favorites, open now through February 9, 2014. This exhibition combines the top vote-getters with work that is new to the collection as selected by RAM curatorial staff.
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Jon Kuhn, Pendulum Cluster, 1998
Glass, Racine Art Museum, Gift of Carol Griseto
Installation funded in part by Marx - Saunders Gallery, Chicago
Photography: Sue Buhler-Maki
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In essence, this exhibition functions as the museum's response to the public's choices. The new works included play off of the subject, media, or formal qualities of the winners and serve to highlight the dynamic nature of RAM's sizable collection.
Visitors cast more than 2,150 votes, with Carol Cohen's Little Compton garnering the largest number, making this glass work an official fan favorite. Due to size, fragility, or site-specific installation, several of the top 10 winners will not be moved from their current locations in the museum to this gallery space. For this reason, RAM has added more of your favorites to the exhibition. The top fifteen works are featured with signage indicating their ranking from the summer's vote.
There are several interesting points revealed through the voting process. For instance, ten of the Top 15 works were displayed in the first floor gallery, near the RAM reception area. Clay, by number, is the most prominent media in RAM's collection, representing approximately a quarter of the craft holdings (over 1,100 works). This is relatively consistent with the fact that one-third of the Top 15 selected by the public are ceramic. Yet, only one of the Top 15 works is a print. This percentage is greatly disproportionate to the make-up of the permanent collection, which is almost half works on paper.
More statistics about the summer exhibition's vote may be found at www.ramart.org.
This exhibition is made possible in part by: Presenting Sponsors - Karen Johnson Boyd and William B. Boyd; SC Johnson; Windgate Charitable Foundation; Gold Sponsors - National Endowment for the Arts; Racine United Arts Fund; Silver Sponsors - Elwood Corporation; Osborne and Scekic Family Foundation; Racine Community Foundation; W.T. Walker Group, Inc.; Wisconsin Arts Board; Bronze Sponsors - CNH America LLC; Corner House; Craft in America PBS Series; E.C. Styberg Foundation, Inc.; Educators Credit Union; In Sink Erator; The Norbell Foundation; Perimeter Gallery, Chicago; Real Racine; Robert W. Baird & Co.; Runzheimer Foundation; Ruud Family Foundation; Carol C. Saunders.
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