RELEASE DATE: JUN 3, 2021
The Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNC Greensboro will debut a dynamic mural in its atrium commissioned from artist Sheena Rose. The project will be on view beginning June 12.
A homecoming is in the works. The Weatherspoon is excited to announce its commission of a major new artwork by artist Sheena Rose, UNC Greensboro MFA ’16. A multidisciplinary artist working in animation, drawing, painting, and performance, Rose’s vibrant and energetic work is at once anchored in her Caribbean heritage and expansive in its explorations of culture and human experience.
A native of Barbados, where she continues to live and work, Rose attended UNC Greensboro as a Fulbright Scholar from 2014 to 2016.
“UNCG gave me a place to think about where I come from—my race, gender, sexuality, and culture as a Black woman from the Caribbean,” she said, reflecting on her time in North Carolina. “It gave me a chance to face myself and move forward with brave steps and to take risks in the studio.”
Since graduating, the artist has had her work featured internationally and recently received the 2020–2021 UNC Greensboro Distinguished Alumni Award in the College of Visual and Performing Arts.
For the Weatherspoon’s atrium, Rose is creating a large-scale mural rich in colors and patterns, each of which she links to a particular thought about our current moment in time. While working on the commission, she said she’s been thinking about such terms as: “reflection, future, new era, anxiety, fears, positivity, new movement, new language, innovation, creative, flexible, observant, listen, meditation, pause, and breathe.” The last two words from this list provide the work’s title: Pause and Breathe, We Got This.
Due to the difficulty of traveling during the pandemic, Rose and the Weatherspoon staff worked together on a new creative approach involving the digital translation of multiple paintings and drawings. Rose says she is excited by “how the digital process is adding more to my concept and to my questions about this new era we are living in. It is like a new language, new habits, and a new norm. The work feels very relevant to this current time—from the painting and drawing in Barbados, to the emails and Zoom calls, to the computer programs and machinery that will allow the work to exist in North Carolina. #DigitalMagic.”
This commission was organized by Dr. Emily Stamey, Curator of Exhibitions.
To learn more about the project, visit the Weatherspoon’s website, weatherspoonart.org.
Image: Sheena Rose. Photo by Amery Butcher, courtesy of the artist.
About the Weatherspoon Art Museum
Mission
Embracing its public service role, the Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNC Greensboro fosters the ability of art to impact lives and connect multiple communities.
History
The Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNC Greensboro was founded by Gregory Ivy in 1941 and is the earliest of any art facilities within the UNC system. The museum was founded as a resource for the campus, community, and region, and its early leadership developed an emphasis—maintained to this day—on presenting and acquiring modern and contemporary works of art. A 1950 bequest from the renowned collection of Claribel and Etta Cone, including prints and bronzes by Henri Matisse and other works on paper by American and European modernists, helped establish the Weatherspoon’s permanent collection. During Ivy’s tenure, other prescient acquisitions included a 1951 suspended mobile by Alexander Calder, Willem de Kooning’s pivotal 1949-50 Woman, and the first drawings by Eva Hesse and Robert Smithson to enter a museum collection.
In 1989, the museum moved into its present location in The Anne and Benjamin Cone Building designed by the architectural firm Mitchell Giurgola. The museum has six galleries and a sculpture courtyard with over 17,000 square feet of exhibition space. The American Alliance of Museums first accredited the Weatherspoon in 1995.
Collections + Exhibitions
The collection of the Weatherspoon Art Museum is one of the foremost of its kind in the Southeast. It represents all major art movements from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. Among the nearly 7,000 works in the collection are pieces by such prominent figures as Henry Ossawa Tanner, Edward Weston, Joseph Stella, David Smith, Jackson Pollock, Elizabeth Catlett, Louise Nevelson, Gordon Parks, Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, Cindy Sherman, Adrian Piper, Betye Saar, Amy Sillman, Nick Cave, Jennifer Steinkamp, and Sanford Biggers. The museum regularly lends to major exhibitions nationally and internationally.
The Weatherspoon is also known for its dynamic exhibition program. Through a lively annual calendar of exhibitions and a multidisciplinary educational program for audiences of all ages, the museum provides an opportunity for visitors to consider artistic, cultural, and social issues of our time—enriching the life of our university, community, and region.
UNC Greensboro
UNC Greensboro is a learner-centered public research university with 18,000 students in eight colleges and schools pursuing more than 150 areas of undergraduate and 200 areas of graduate study. Recognized nationally for helping first-generation and lower-income students find paths to prosperity, UNCG is ranked No. 1 most affordable institution in North Carolina for net cost by the N.Y. Times and No. 1 in North Carolina for social mobility by The Wall Street Journal. Designated an Innovation and Economic Prosperity University by the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, UNCG is a community-engaged research institution with a portfolio of more than $67M in research and creative activity. The University creates an annual economic impact for the Piedmont Triad region in excess of $1B. Please visit uncg.edu and follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram, Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Weatherspoon Art Museum
UNC Greensboro
1005 Spring Garden Street
Greensboro, NC 27412, (336) 334-5770, weatherspoon@uncg.edu
For more information or press images, contact:
Loring Mortensen, Head of Communications, (336) 256-1451, lamorten@uncg.edu
