[lively instrumental music]
- The following program
is a co-production
of the Chazen Museum of Art
and University Communications at
University of Wisconsin-Madison.
[dramatic violin music]
- Andrea Selbig: Through here. - Russell Panczenko: All right.
- Selbig: Into the lobby.
This is a lot of effort.
- Panczenko: So they're going up in this slot?
- Yes. - That's right.
- Selbig: This is a very big undertaking.
Then, they'll start lifting.
But I think the result is going to be fantastic.
- All right. So, okay.
So, let me just make sure I understand this.
- Selbig: Actually, it is four large pieces,
but the largest component is 27 feet long.
- [whistles "phew"] Okay.
- Our director, Russell Panczenko,
has a really wonderful vision.
- Oh, you're going that way?
[whistles]
- Selbig: And I think it's really wonderful
that he and Jim Dine are working together
to bring this into the gallery.
- I can see that you've got.
I see what you're doing.
- Selbig: We discussed removing entire windows.
- Panczenko: So, there, there, and there.
- We discussed cranes and lifts.
This is sort of kind of like doing Y-turn.
In the end, we found a way
that we could rig it up a stairway
and then we had to figure out
exactly how we could swing a 27-foot crate
around various corners and through hallways
so that we could actually get it into
this particular gallery.
- All right, it sounds easy enough.
[laughing]
[lively orchestra music]
- Panczenko: You know, the way this project came about
is Jim Dine had done a series
of wonderful drawings
based on the ancient Greek and Roman sculptures
at the Glyptothek in Munich.
As we were walking through the gallery
and I thought
to duplicate a relief
in this room, in a sense
almost make it a temple of ancient art,
which holds our ancient art collection.
And then, that space which has been empty
just seemed as a perfect place
to do a relief based on his drawings.
It was a lovely idea, you know,
which I jumped into with great enthusiasm.
He responded with enthusiasm.
- It was created just for the Chazen Museum of Art.
And the way it will match up
with these wonderful ancient works in this gallery,
I think it'll just be really memorable piece
that I think that visitors will cherish for years.
- People have looked to Classical Antiquity
and taken inspiration from it.
And so what intrigues me here
is here's Jim Dine,
a man, really
one of the top American artists of his day,
taking inspiration from antiquity
and then we're bringing that inspiration back
and combining it
with the source of inspiration.
All right, we're off and running.
Well, baby steps.
[laughing]
[police sirens "pin pon, pin pon"]
Panczenko: We're in Paris, France.
And the reason we're in Paris is
Jim Dine has a studio in Paris.
And the work is so large
that none of his other studios can deal with it.
[camera shutter clicks] Yeah.
Coming to Europe,
especially a place like Paris, Germany, Spain,
[camera shutter double-clicks]
these have been part of his life and his creativity.
The atmosphere of the city is very important to him,
it's very much become part of him
and part of his experience.
Let's face it: this man is an icon of American art
and he has been for several decades
and suddenly to have access to Jim Dine
and have the opportunity to bring a major, major piece
that fits into an intellectual concept
to our campus and have it on the campus for the future,
that's quite a coup for us.
So, my job as a museum director is
"We want it. We believe in it.
"I think this is important.
How do I make it happen?"
And so, that's what we set off to do.
- Jim Dine: The fourth one I'm about to begin.
And, Russell, if you want to, you can come up with me.
But I'm going to start and we see what happens.
This morning, I'm going to draw from
one of the first Classical figures I ever did.
- Panczenko: Given the scale of the commission,
the importance of the commission.
- Dine: Like I said, this is just the beginning.
- You don't just say, "Well, okay, surprise me.
Let it show up in Madison when you're done."
Oh, yeah.
So, I have to come up periodically
and take a look and check out where we are,
how it's progressing.
And, of course, Dine himself wants that response.
- You know, it's all about relating to
the next thing I do, you know.
So, I'm trying to get this in
so I can do another one that speaks to that
and also this that will speak
to that across the room.
So, if you realize now,
I mean even though they're not put together,
we're seeing what we're going to have.
- Panczenko I can just imagine
when we're finally brought together.
That is really going to be a powerful, powerful...
- I hope so.
- Panczenko I have no doubt, Jim.
I'm thrilled with this.
- Dine: The continual drawing...
I mean, my whole life has been based on drawing.
And I feel that
it's the clearest way to speak, drawing.
- Panczenko And that's charcoal that you're using?
- I'm using charcoal over pastel right now.
- Panczenko Right.
- After you leave, it probably changes.
They always do.
And I might introduce
paint, also.
Some house paint.
- You know, when I think of Classical Antiquity,
I think of very still images,
very, you know, quiet museums, people not speaking,
everything having its place and standing very still,
you know, sort of from the past.
But this is from the past,
but, boy, this is going to explode when it's together.
It's almost like, you know, like atomic fusion.
Suddenly, the dynamism and the activity
is just going to increase.
[soft instrumental music]
- Dine: It's like a dream.
It's like a dream of the antique.
- Panczenko It's like a dream in that it's moving.
- It's moving. - You're constantly moving through.
- I agree. - You can't stop and stay still.
- I love that about that. - Me too, me too.
I wanted the drawing to be right,
but I also wanted a kind of accuracy
that I don't care about here.
I wanted this to be more of a riff on the antique
rather than
a record of it.
There's enough records of it.
I could go on for years with this.
I really could.
- Well, you know, there's more walls in the same gallery. [chuckling]
- That's true.
- You know, one form of art
is the traditional art forms that we know,
you know, paintings on canvas, sculpture,
we're all used to that.
But a lot of artists have been getting into installations
and they've been doing it for centuries.
I mean, you look at the Sistine Chapel:
yeah, it's a painting, but look, there's a ceiling!
The artists who arrive, who achieve
are always looking to do something
bigger, more exciting, more intricate
to challenge themselves.
- And I want to do things
in a museum context
but add a little life
to that context.
- We had Gronk! who came
and gave him the entire fourth floor.
There was an experience
because the first day, he came in with a bucket of paint
and faced the wall.
And he wanted audience right there.
[laughing]
So, his performing, his doing
the art on the wall
was part of the visitors' experience.
And not only that,
but he engaged visitors, he talked to them
and school kids were really enthusiastic
because he talked to a school kid
and, you know, explained what he was doing
and he'd get them excited.
- And so, each space in unique, each space
is completely different than the other.
- Our primary purpose as a university museum
is to educate people about art.
And for us to get into areas
that are outside of masterpieces into areas of process,
which are very much being explored
by contemporary artist today
was an important, very important thing to do.
- So, this kind of installation, this kind of challenge,
this kind of audience interaction,
interaction between what the artists makes
and the space that it's in,
yeah, it's exciting
and it's very much part of the art world.
- This is thicker than I thought it would be.
My name is Daniel Clark.
I work for Jim in Paris.
- And then, you get your bar in there.
I'm Jason Treffry.
I work for Jim in Walla Walla, Washington.
- So, we're shifting all the crates up this day.
- Daniel Clark: And this is the second meeting that
we're having here in the museum
just to really, I guess, dot the i's and cross the t's.
- Well, we're here today because
we're having preliminary meetings
about how to attach the panels to the ceiling in here
and the hardware that we'll need to go into the plaster.
And so, we're going to meet with the engineers here today.
- That's the reason we're going to put all the pressure
right on the channel. - That makes sense.
Also, the crew, who will assist with
lifting the works up in place on an angle here?
It's a lot of people to coordinate, be on the same page.
- Eli Reynolds: It's really interesting to see and learn,
you know, what goes into creating this
and that they're actually mocking it up in France
and making sure all the seams line up perfectly
and, well, it's not just a piece of canvas on metal backing.
- You could put a strap around it.
- We're very grateful for the opportunity
to be trusted and to assist the museum
with everything that they have going on
and making sure that things aren't overlooked
and trying to have a good final product.
- Well, you know, people keep asking me
where is the painting right now?
And, you know, about two weeks ago,
I got a picture from Jim Dine's assistant
showing a crate being lifted out of the building
and suddenly, you see two or three people
lifting it, putting it into a crate,
four or five people manhandling this crate
into a lorry.
And, in fact, there's one of the photographs
where they've dragged the crate across the street.
And they've literally blocked off
the entire street in Paris.
So, you look at that
and it brings home the scale of it.
- I really fell in love with this piece.
And I want to tell you,
I am so proud of it and I wasn't for--
It took me a year-and-a-half to make it.
And I wasn't.
I was stymied a lot of the time
and it was very hard going
because it's a lot of real estate,
but it is exactly what I want now.
And I'm just delighted.
I can't, I didn't want to let it out in the studio.
And the next time I see it, it will be up.
- Panczenko: Always when you bring in an artist
and you do some kind of a commission,
you're taking a chance.
So, what you do is you cover yourself as best you can
by 'who do you pick?',
'what kind of discussions do you have?',
and then 'can you bring yourself around to trust?'
And if you can, then get out of the way.
It's up to the artist.
[Panczenko whispering] Get out of your way.
- Dine: But his respect for me and for his understanding,
what I needed and the kind of privacy I needed
and the time I needed
is just been great, just been fantastic
and it's made all the difference to me.
I could relax about it and be tense about my work
and not about Russell breathing down my neck.
I've never heard a peep.
No, he's great.
- Yes, we've gotten the expertise.
We've gotten the measurements and all the information
back and forth across the Atlantic
but you still hold your breath.
[diesel engine purrs]
Well, they're here.
Couple of years in the making, you know.
- Man: Move back, everybody.
- Panczenko: Wow, this is amazing.
Having seen this in Paris
and now here it is on this side of the ocean,
it's, like, fantastic.
You can only ship things up to 22 feet long air freight.
But the paintings are too large to come to the States by air.
We have to ship them by sea.
- Maybe we want to slide 'em out.
- Mover: One, two, three.
- Panczenko: We're quite excited
that it's here, finally.
And we're going to be even more excited
when we finally unpack those crates.
- Mover: Pump it up.
- I'm going to drop this one off to your left side.
- Panczenko: Now, suddenly
things are starting to go a little faster,
a little faster.
- Right there, you guys. Ready?
- Go now? - Yep.
- I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
I think we've done all due diligence
and everybody feels comfortable,
the experts feel comfortable,
yes, this can be done,
but then it's the 'let's do it' part.
- Selbig: It's one thing to ship them here from Paris.
That's actually the easy part.
- We're here.
- The hard part begins when it comes into our doors here.
So, how do we get it from the loading dock
from the outside of our building in a truck...
- Man: Go up some more.
- Selbig: ...to actually being inside this gallery?
- Man: Good.
- Pretty good? - Yeah.
Three, two, one.
Go.
- Selbig: We've all very carefully measured
and we were able to rig the crates up
through a really pretty tight opening
in a stairwell here in our lobby.
- Man: It's inside by a foot.
Let's just keep going for a while.
[workers conversing]
- Selbig: It still seems
rather unbelievable that we're doing this.
I was really worried about
if it really would fit through that narrow opening.
I can't believe how big that crate is, and how long.
But it did-- Everything seems to be going off without a hitch.
And we have them up to the third floor
and now they're just currently
taking them off of the gantries
so that they can roll them through our galleries
into the ancient gallery.
- Panczenko: This will be a six- to eight-week process.
And I'm not even talking about
the week after we unveil the piece
because the week after that,
we have to put all the other artwork
back to where it was. [chuckles]
- Selbig: The panels need to fit in really tightly
and we're just keeping our fingers crossed
that they do fit.
- Somebody's going to have to check my math on that.
- Selbig: His assistants, I think they also,
perhaps,
didn't exactly know how complicated
this was going to be.
- The surface is incredibly fragile.
So, my big worry is:
how do we get it up there without touching it?
- I trust the team.
These two guys that work for me are just brilliant.
- It's a bit bigger than anything we've ever done before.
- Man: It's just wire mesh with plaster over it
attached to little, thin pieces of steel.
- I'm drilling some pilot holes to make sure
we got these crossbeams
just to make sure everything lines up.
[lift platform ascends and beeps]
- Man: It should be pretty close.
- Worker: It's right above it.
- Worker: I think this first one--
getting the system just sort of dialed in--
will be the most difficult.
And as long as it works well, we'll just copy it four times.
And now, the next few days will be the big days.
- Full steam ahead. - Exactly.
[drilling]
- Ready? - Ready.
- Panczenko: Then they have to be lifted into place and hung.
[workers conversing, drilling]
And then, exactly how the corners work out.
You know, how tightly will they fit?
Will they rub one another?
So that they fit and work smoothly as a painting
all the way around the room.
- Selbig: There's only so much you can plan for.
Once we get up there and we see how level the walls are
and how straight and plum the various walls' angles are.
- No, we got to go up though.
- Man: Well, want a little more? Looking really good now.
[workers conversing]
- Now, that's almost be able to tuck in up top.
- You want to come off, on?
- I don't think so. - Lift.
[workers conversing]
It needs to come down another foot.
The left side is good.
That side needs to come down.
- Man: The middle is just put down,
and then the right side is now there.
There's got to be somewhere that works.
- James: Cool.
Let's do it.
That feels good.
I need you to drop down that little bit on this side.
- Man: I feel them in now.
Oh, that's good.
[laughs]
[workers conversing]
- That's two down. - Two down, nice.
- Panczenko: They look great.
It's so cool.
Don't tear the graphing paper.
We have to reuse it for the next murals. [woman laughs]
- Man: There's an intensity in this
that comes through very, very strongly.
- Wow.
The dynamism of the four of them,
you know, swinging all the way around.
[lively instrumental music]
Oh, yes. Ohhh, yes.
It's definitely worth it.
And I like the way he's thrown in a little color,
a little yellow, a little blue here and there.
- I think he started thinking of it as a ceiling
not as a painting. - Mm-hmm.
- Like that, in particular, is just gorgeous.
- Yup.
Alex, this is beautiful.
It's absolutely beautiful.
Yeah.
I can't wait to get
the classical art collection down here and placed
so that whole relationship
between antiquity and the present day
gets to be demonstrated very clearly.
- Dine: Well, I've never done anything like this.
I don't think anybody has, this configuration.
Dan, what's next? - Eleven.
- Panczenko: He, himself is aware
of what he's achieved.
- Dine: You don't get the full feeling of a thing
unless you're here.
I've never seen it with all four sides butted together.
So I was... I'm quite dazzled by them.
It's like I didn't do it.
You know, I don't remember doing it
because I didn't do it this way.
But it worked out just fine.
It perfectly satisfied me.
It's exactly what it's supposed to look like.
[lift's pump vibrates 'vroomph']
Should I get you one for Montrouge, really?
You could just go up and down all day,
all day, back and forth.
This one doesn't look like it's even.
It looks like it's dipping down.
- You know, he's done far more than we ever expected.
It's fantastic, absolutely fantastic.
Wow. - I really meant it.
I wish you'd find me another gig like this.
That was so much fun.
- The other thing I said to our education person,
I said, "Okay, I've got a challenge for your kids.
"When you bring school kids or even school teachers,
every single one of those heads and all of those figures
is an identifiable ancient sculpture.
Can you identify?
How many can you do? - Yeah.
- So, you know, there would be wonderful thing
for people to learn about your art
and learn about ancient art--
- Absolutely. - --at the same time.
Well, you know, this installation,
I hate to call it this,
but in a sense, it's my last hurrah.
[camera shutter clicks]
Okay.
There's things that I'd like to do,
and you know me, I've done photography since high school,
however, sneak a day in here, sneak a weekend there.
Yes, I bought myself a brand new lens
as a retirement present.
And just do what I've always wanted to do with a camera.
- Dine: Well, I mean, farewell to Russell,
I mean, thanks a lot, Russell!
He's leaving us.
And what are we supposed to do now?
You know what I mean?
And I wish him well, of course,
but I'm going to see him anyway all the times.
He's a friend of mine.
- And it's been, you know, an exciting 33 years.
The new building did not exist at the point.
The new building
keeps the spaces that we had in here originally
and adds the entire new building for museum space.
So today, we have approximately 48,000 square feet
of gallery space.
Very few museums-- whether the university or community--
can boast that much space for the exhibition part
So, here we are.
So, I guess it's home now. [laughter]
Ah, excuse me.
Well, good to see you, Tom.
Glad that you could come.
Hello, Paula. - Hi.
- Hey. - Jim Dine!
- Everybody here, huh? - What are you doing?
Now, if I only get the artists here,
we could get the ball rolling.
Wait until you see this thing upstairs!
This is really, really special.
Yeah, but I'm waiting for Jim to get here.
Sorry if I'm a little antsy.
Hey!
Hello, hello.
Jim?
We're going to do something a little bit different.
I will introduce my dean.
My dean will introduce you
and then you, he, and I will be given scissors
and we cut the ribbon and tell people "go!"
So, just come on up.
And it's my pleasure to welcome you to this reception
for one of the really major, major acquisitions
and additions to our collection ever.
- So, Russell, thank you.
[cheers and applause]
- I love this work and I'm really sad that it's here.
It should be in my collection, you know.
[laughter]
And this is ridiculous that I let it go.
[laughter] - Exactly.
- And I declare the exhibition open.
You have a real treat coming.
Enjoy yourself.
It's amazing to me
how many people would come up to me
in the course of the evening and say, "Well, you know,
"we weren't quite sure about some of the skulls.
"We like some, but we didn't like...
But we absolutely love this piece!"
It really is a tremendous piece,
recognizable,
either Greek or Roman,
piece of sculpture.
To have something like this
come in and sort of culminate
my years as chief curator and director,
I'm happy that it came under my tenure,
very happy with that.
My most precious moments are working with artists
and getting involved with them and their creativity
and seeing what can happen
in the course of the institution.
And so, this really encapsulates a lot of
what, for me,
being in the museum world is all about.
*