Congratulations BMoCA! Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art Receives a Denver Foundation Community Grant

$12,000 grant award to fund BMoCA’s 2010 on-going contemporary art programs

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA) will receive funding from the Community Grants Program at the Denver Foundation in the amount of $12,000. The selection process for this grant is highly competitive and will contribute to the exhibition, programming and operating needs of the museum. BMoCA actively seeks to provide an inclusive forum for all community members to participate in art education, exhibitions, programming and volunteerism. The Denver Foundation is a community foundation dedicated to improving life in Metro Denver through philanthropy, leadership, and strengthening the community. Community foundations are endowments, permanent pools of money contributed by donors to benefit a specific geographic area.

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is dedicated to the presentation and exploration of significant art of our time. Through innovative exhibitions and educational programming featuring regional, national and international artists, the museum strives to engage its communities and visitors with the forefront and evolution of contemporary art. The museum is based in a historic landmark building in downtown Boulder.

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is located at 1750 13th Street in downtown Boulder, Colorado. The museum’s winter hours (January-April) are Tuesday–Saturday, 11am to 5pm; Sunday, noon to 3pm; closed Monday.

The museum’s summer hours (May-October) are Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, 11am to 5pm; Wednesday, 11am to 8pm; Saturday, 9am to 4pm; Sunday, noon to 3pm; closed Monday.

Regular museum admission is $5 for adults; $4 for students, seniors, and educators. Free admission to the museum is offered to members, children under 12, and during the Boulder County Farmers’ Market—Saturdays from 9am-4:00pm and Wednesdays from 4:00-8:00pm—generously sponsored by Xcel Energy.

Breasts for Peace

Yep, you read the headline right. Now go ahead and snicker if you must. But when you’re finished, take just a moment to understand why Lyons artist Sally White King recently invited area women to leave imprints of their breasts on muslin prayer flags at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art.

Apparently, when soldiers from the Dagara tribe in the West African nation of Burkina Faso return home from war, they walk through a welcoming line of women, whose bare breasts are considered nurturing symbols that help heal the horrors of war.

“War is not permitted back into the village,” King says. “When I heard the story, it hit me like a lightning bolt, and I wanted to do something with it for the American soldiers who are returning home from war in the Middle East.” And that’s how the Breast Prayers for Peace project was born.

After staging a similar event in Lyons earlier this year, King worked with a friend, Sarah Kinn, who’s BMoCA’s adult-education coordinator, to organize Boulder’s event. About 25 women turned out each time, including several women in their 70s and a mother and her daughter.

“It was definitely a weird experience,” Kinn says, noting that the women were protected from public view while their chests were painted and they made their impressions. But she says the participants were grateful to be given a unique opportunity to show their support for American troops in a way that reverses the objectification of women’s bodies and emphasizes their “power of healing and nurturing.”

It was also “lighthearted and humorous,” Kinn says. “When you get naked with other people, you bond somehow.”

King strung the prayer flags on an 80-foot-long rope, and hopes to find a place to display them soon. “I’m having a blast with this,” she says.

—Michael Whiteman-Jones

“futureLOVER” with French artist, Ben Evans at BMoCA, Friday, August 7

Friday, August 7, 7pm
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art
1750 13th Street, Boulder
$5 for non-members and free entry to all BMoCA members

“futureLOVER is a performance about the exploration of a modern man: fragile, vulgar, nostalgic. It is a dance of objects and memory, confession and solitude…events in search of masculine codes that are rarely found. Make your own. DIY.”

In describing his work French artist, Ben Evans, states:

“My work situates itself between performance and installation. I call it performance because it is not easily defined as theater nor simply labeled as dance. Collaborative by nature, I seek to work alongside other artists, and am deeply influenced by other mediums, notably architecture, sculpture, and photography. A recurrent theme in my work is a search for the incorporation and co-operation of these mediums. In this way, there often exists a direct rapport with the space in which I perform (oftentimes a non-theatrical venue) and the architecture and objects therein. The process of making work fascinates me, and so the personal experience of being in this process often finds its way into the performance itself. While I don’t always focus on identity as a theme, inevitably the work is often emotional and tends to reflect a certain sense of self, and a quiet experience of the live moment.”

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is a dynamic venue dedicated to the presentation of significant art of our time. Through an innovative program of regional, national and international exhibition and performance, the museum inspires and educates its community and visitors from around the world to explore the forefront and evolution of contemporary art.

The Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art is located at 1750 13th Street in downtown Boulder, Colorado. The museum’s summer hours (through October) are Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, 11am to 5pm; Wednesday, 11am to 8pm; Saturday, 9am to 4pm; Sunday, noon to 3pm; closed Monday. Regular museum admission is $4 for adults; $3 for students, seniors, and educators. Free admission to the museum is offered to members, children under 12, and during the Boulder County Farmers’ Market—Saturdays from 9am-4:00pm and Wednesdays from 4:00-8:00pm—generously sponsored by CHASE and Xcel Energy.

Kirsten Gerdes Stoltz
Associate Curator
Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art