The UK Art Museum, a part of the College of Fine Arts, held a public reception for the general public to showcase its new exhibition, “Disguise the Limit: John Yau’s Collaborations.”
According to the museum’s website, the exhibit contains several collaborative artworks that John Yau, a poet, author and critic had created alongside “a range of visual artists during the past five decades.”
The reception was held in the art museum from 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 10. Both UK students and other artists attended the event.
“I began collaborating with artists more than 40 years ago,” Yau said in a speech to the attendees of the reception. “I certainly never thought that there would be a time that I would get to see it all together.”
Yau thanked Stuart Horodner, director of the UK Art Museum and curator of the exhibit, as well as everyone at the art museum who made the exhibit possible.
Horodner also welcomed visitors to the reception and introduced Yau.
“I probably read John Yau’s criticism first in the Cooper Union Library in New York when I was an art student in the late ‘70s, I got to meet him many years later in the early ‘90s when I had a gallery in Manhattan,” Horodner said. “Fast-forward many many years to 2019 in this very room, I invited John to come and give a lecture on the history of poet-painter collaborations.”
The numerous works, all displayed on the first floor of the museum, featured a combination of poetry and visual art.
“(John) told me about the scope of his own collaborations,” Horodner said. “The more we talked about it the more it became obvious that there was this abundance of riches.”
Horodner said that Yau had collaborated not only with well-known artists but also with students and emerging artists.
“I had no idea his collaborations with artists were so extensive,” Judy Ledgerwood, an artist who had collaborated with Yau and who’s work is part of the exhibition, said. “I’m happy to be part of such an incredible group.”
Ledgerwood had been told about the exhibition’s opening by Horodner and traveled from Michigan to come to the reception.
“I try to see (Yau) whenever I’m in New York, he’s written about my work often. It’s a relationship that I treasure,” Ledgerwood said.
Katie Taliaferro, a sophomore majoring in horticulture, said she found out about the reception through BBNvolved.
“I really like art, I like when people are passionate about things,” Taliaferro said. “Online I only really see a certain kind of art, so it’s nice to actually see it in person.”
Horodner said he hoped the exhibit would help stimulate more collaboration among artists in the community.
“We have amazing writers in this community on and off the campus, the same can be said for visual artists. I feel like my secret pleasure is that people walk out of here going ‘I want to go collaborate with someone’ and figure out a way to do it,” Horodner said.
