{"id":75,"date":"2012-07-17T14:22:07","date_gmt":"2012-07-17T14:22:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/notebook\/?p=75"},"modified":"2017-01-26T14:18:20","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T19:18:20","slug":"mills-zolla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2012\/07\/17\/mills-zolla\/","title":{"rendered":"In a case of turnabout, museum director shows his own art in Chicago"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

"Pacific Lands" (2012), an acrylic painting on a printed map mounted on board by Dan Mills.<\/p><\/div>\n

When Dan Mills talks with artists about showing their work at the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Museum of Art, of which he is the director, he has more insight into their concerns than do some of his peers.<\/p>\n

That’s because Mills is a working artist himself. He makes work that employs a variety of media to explore themes and imagery that encompass cartography, humor, imperialism, cartoon characters, landscape and portraiture.<\/p>\n

On July 13, Chicago’s Zolla\/Lieberman Gallery<\/a> opened exhibitions by Mills and two other artists, Wilder Buck and Glenn Wexler. The gallery, established in 1976, shows a diverse selection of contemporary artwork.<\/p>\n

A week later, at the Chicago Cultural Center’s Michigan Avenue Galleries<\/a>, Mills is showing\u00a0his U.S. Future States<\/em>, a “world atlas” composed of supposed U.S. annexations of various nations — in short, a parody of U.S. imperialism. The opening is at 5:30 p.m. on the 20th, and Mills gives a gallery talk the following day at 1 p.m. The show runs through Sept. 23.<\/p>\n

The Perceval Press, actor Viggo Mortensen\u2019s publishing company, produced a hardcover book based on US Future State Atlas<\/em> series of drawings in 2009.<\/p>\n

Mills’ Zolla\/Lieberman exhibition, titled Quest<\/em><\/a>, continues the artist’s interest in maps as deliberately constructed art forms that depict a geography as much subjective and psychological as physical and national. Like such other Mills projects as The US Future States Atlas<\/em> and the Embassy<\/em> series, the Quest<\/em> paintings are “characterized by a keen sense of irony and a witty insouciance toward the desires that fuel colonialism and imperialism,” writes Eleanor Heartney in her exhibition catalog essay, “Will to Power.”<\/p>\n

“But at the same time, Mills never neglects the visual aspects of his work. His projects straddle the worlds of politics and art, and in the end occupy a region that partakes as much of Matisse as of 18th-century political satirists like James Gillray and William Hogarth. His works appeal to the mind and to the eye, making us smile in order to make us think.”<\/p>\n

The Zolla\/Lieberman exhibitions continue through Aug. 25. Zolla\/Lieberman represents Mills.\u00a0 Director of the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ museum since 2010<\/a>, Mills and his wife, artist Gail Skudera, lived in Chicago and were active in the Windy City’s art community from 1981 to 1994.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On July 13, Chicago’s Zolla\/Lieberman Gallery opened exhibitions by ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Museum of Art Director Dan Mills and two other artists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":76,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"bates_author_byline_override":"","_estimated-read-time":"","_post-template":"","_header-color":"","_photo-credit":"","_header-effect":"","override_related_with_tag":"","_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":""},"categories":[11010,14],"tags":[1363,2717,6618,6889],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-faculty-staff","tag-bates-college-museum-of-art","tag-dan-mills","tag-olin-arts","tag-performing-and-visual-arts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/105"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76780,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/76780"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}