Orlando Museum of Art acquires work from Florida Prize finalists
There’s still time to catch Orlando Museum of Art’s ninth annual Florida Prize in Contemporary Art exhibition, as the Loch Haven Park institution has extended its run date through Sept. 17. In related news, the museum has acquired a new piece of art created by a pair of the Florida Prize exhibitors. And look for special “tactile tours” and workshops, ideal for the visually impaired, related to the museum’s visiting distinguished-portrait exhibition.
The workshops accompany the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s sixth Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition; finalists’ works are currently on view in “The Outwin: American Portraiture Today” exhibit, on its first stop of a national tour. Donna Castellanos, a mixed-media artist and competition finalist, is conducting a series of workshops and “tactile tours” this month in conjunction with Lighthouse Central Florida, which offers services to those with vision loss.
United Arts of Central Florida funded the project, which renewed a previous partnership between Orlando Museum of Art and Lighthouse. The museum has a history of programs for people with special needs, including its Art’s the Spark events for those suffering from memory or neurological impairments and their caregivers.
The workshops, which take place Sept. 14 and 16, will include experiences that minimize the restrictions that visual art usually poses for the participants. The museum’s educational materials, for example, will be translated into Braille or audio transcribed by Lighthouse staff.
Castellanos has a degree in graphic design from the American Academy of Art in Chicago and works in a variety of textures and media, including fabric, yarn and cast-off items from estate sales and
thrift shops. Her 2020 work “Bertha, I’d like to know where you got the notion,” on view at the museum features fabric, zippers, pin cushions, snaps, paper packaging, knitting needles and other sewing notions to create a woman’s portrait.
For more information on the tours or workshops, call 407-896-4231.
Meanwhile, in the final days of the Florida Prize exhibition, the museum has acquired a work by a pair of artists who won the 2023 competition’s People’s Choice Award. Each year, the museum exhibits specially selected work by artists living and working in Florida. Among those finalists for the prize, a jury of experts selects a winner — this year Akiko Kotani, who received a $20,000 award in June.
The public votes on a “people’s choice” award, which for the first time this year went to a collaborative team: Elliot and Erick Jiménez, twins based in Miami, took the honor and received $2,500.
Now, the museum has obtained a work by the brothers for its permanent collection, thanks to a donation by its Acquisition Trust. Titled “The Grand Odalisque,” the 2022 large-scale photo print is an homage to Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’s 1814 painting “La Grande Odalisque,” on view at the Louvre in Paris.
The work illustrates both the Jiménez brothers’ interest in the artistry that lies between photography and painting as well as their aesthetic, which is inspired by European art history and their Cuban heritage.
Since an early age, the twins have been involved in Lucumí, or Santeria, a religious practice native to Cuba
that combines the beliefs and practices of the island’s Yoruba people and Roman Catholicism. Although the artists’ images are captured with a camera, “they have a painterly feel and refer to some of art history’s most iconic paintings,” the museum announcement says.
Ingres’s original “La Grande Odalisque” depicted a concubine with elongated proportions and a purposeful lack of anatomical realism.
In the work by the Jiménez brothers, the color yellow is used as it refers to sensuality, beauty and fertility in the Lucumí tradition. As is typical of their art, the central figure is mysterious and, in this case, androgynous. The subject is covered in star-like gems, elevating the status of the figure from Ingres’s concubine.
“The Grand Odalisque” is the fourth work purchased by the Acquisition Trust,
underscoring the museum’s “commitment to the art of our time and to supporting artists who live and work in our state,” the announcement said. The Trust’s members pay dues, which are used to purchase art produced after 1970; such contemporary art now has the largest representation in the museum’s permanent collection.
The Florida Prize exhibition, which had been scheduled to close at the end of August, is now on view until Sunday, Sept. 17. For more information on that or “The Outwin: American Portraiture Today,” which runs through Oct. 8, go to omart. org/exhibitions.