Jim Olson to give lecture on art and architecture

PULLMAN – The Museum of Art at WSU will host a reception and evening lecture with architect Jim Olson, recipient of the 2009 American Institute of Architects Architecture Firm Award.
 A reception for Olson will be at 6 p.m. March 3 in the museum’s main gallery, with the lecture following at 7 p.m. in the FAC Auditorium. The exhibition, “Pause: Art & Architecture,” is open for viewing until April 3.
Olson will speak about his firm’s experience in designing spaces for museums and private art collections, and the way fine art has impacted his firm’s thinking about architecture. A question and answer session with Olson will follow.
“Pause: Art & Architecture” is a cornucopia of works that playfully explore the relationship between fine art and architecture through photography, digital prints, video and sculpture.
 
 
 
 As compared to an architect’s focus on “form and function,” visual artists tend to explore the dramatic – and often absurdist – opportunities of architectural spaces in terms of how they convey events, or the ambiguities of how we relate to the built environment. For example, featured most prominently in the gallery is Chris Larson’s large-scale sculpture, “Pause,” which portrays a room-sized fantasy made entirely of wood in the Duke’s of Hazzard’s 1969 Dodge Charger crashing through Ted Kaczynski’s (the “Unabomber”) Montana shack.
Works in the exhibition come from the collections of Western Bridge and Bill & Ruth True, the Washington Art Consortium, the Missoula Art Museum and the Museum of Art at WSU.
The Museum of Art is located on Wilson Road across from Martin Stadium in the Fine Arts Center on the WSU campus. Gallery hours are Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., open until 7 p.m. Thursday and closed Sunday.